


Nothing Is Never An Option

by GleefulHeretic



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Tall and Small
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GleefulHeretic/pseuds/GleefulHeretic
Summary: "She's...around. And whether we've "hung out" or not is none of your business."
Relationships: Athena/Janey Springs
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	1. War Is The Final Option

Pandora. Sometime between the events of Borderlands: The Pre-sequel and Borderlands 2.

[ECHO DEVICE ONLINE]

[BEGIN ECHOLOG RECORDING 001 – 21:27PM]Athena here. I'm under orders from my colleague… Agh no, she wouldn't like that. Dammit, hold on I'm starting over.[END ECHOLOG RECORDING 001 – 21:28PM]

[BEGIN ECHOLOG RECORDING 002 – 21:32PM]-eally thought I was getting better at this. Ahem. Ok, Athena here. I'm under orders from my… _partner_ …to record my thoughts and, in her words, "just anything that pops into my pretty head while I'm gone". I can't say I understand it but this is the first time I've been away from Elpis for long since the Zarpedon incident and she believes the sound of me talking will help her sleep in my absence so uh, here I go. I don't really know what I'm supposed to say but that's nothing new so I guess I'll simply ramble for a while like I normally do.

Pandora is…well…Pandora. It seems even a full-scale Hyperion invasion hasn't done as much to change this place as Jack likes to think. I landed the ship Janey fixed up for me in the closest thing I could find to a safe place and hid it as well as possible but literally within ten minutes of being here I was attacked by a roaming group of psychos. Welcome to paradise, right?

I managed to deal with my assailants easily enough but once I was done putting them down I walked over the next hill and saw what appeared to be a great many more of them fighting, or rather **trying** to fight against another much larger, much…shoutier psycho. The strangest thing was he seemed to be accompanied by a girl with blue hair wielding some kind of supernatural powers. Another siren on Pandora. Only six can exist in the galaxy at a time and, as far as I know, this planet has seen three of them in the last few years. What are the chances? I was concerned they may have been working with Roland and Lilith's "Crimson Raiders" so I quickly made myself scarce. Honestly, if those two are recruiting those masked madmen into their little band now I wouldn't be surprised.

Speaking of which, despite my… _history_ with them I made a promise to Janey I wouldn't go after Roland, Lilith or Moxxi for what happened on Helios. It was the only way I could get her to stay behind on Elpis. Apparently knowing I'm fighting **one** army by myself was enough worry for her to deal with. She didn't understand why I had to come down here again in the first place but I couldn't just hide and watch while the man I could have… **should** have killed years ago slaughters innocent people like cattle down here.

This whole thing is my fault. Partially at least. This "warrior" he invaded Pandora for? This thing he thinks will allow him to destroy anything that stands against him? He wouldn't have known about it if we hadn't found the vault on Elpis for him. We watched Jack sink into madness and then we handed him the location of a possible alien super weapon as he raved about bathing Pandora in fire. Not exactly my best days work.

I was pissed about Moxxi trying to kill us and I can't say thinking about it doesn't still make my sword hand twitchy but…the more I've seen what Jack is capable of the more I think she may have been onto something back then. I'm not quite a big enough woman to just live and let live but I understand what she must have been thinking. I hear Nisha and Wilhelm are still working for Jack. Helping him "clean this place up". I'll stay away from Sanctuary and the Crimson Raiders, at least their goals are more or less the same as mine, but if I run into the good sheriff or Jack's mechanized attack dog down here I can't promise anything. They may have once been my teammates but we all chose our own paths after Eleseer. If either of them tries to prevent me from stopping Jack I will not hesitate.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be heading to New Haven for a few things and then I'll look into what I can do to weaken Hyperion's grip on this place. If I know Jack I'll be able to draw him out if I disrupt his operations in the area enough. If I cause him enough trouble perhaps he will assume I'm Lilith or Roland, his hatred for them will get the better of him and he'll show himself long enough for me to cut him down. Even if that doesn't happen I'll at least be making the job easier for Sanctuary. I don't particularly care who deals the killing blow here as long as he's stopped.

So yeah, I have a lot of work to do but, in the meantime I've found what I think is a mostly safe place for me to spend the night. Terrain is favourable in case of an ambush, nearby water source that doesn't appear to be contaminated and I shouldn't have to deal with getting rained on while I sleep because the sky is completely…

…clear…

…

You know, it's funny.

The galaxy is filled with romantic types. Even out here in what I feel like I'm qualified to say is one of the darkest, most violent corners of known space where you're lucky to make it through any given day without some bandit running you down with his truck for the fun of it. Before all the vault-hunting business on Elpis I kept hearing people talking about how pretty the sight of the moon was on Pandora. Even some other Atlas personnel would talk about it like it was some kind of magical, glowing orb of smiles or something. I remember looking up at it while I was doing weapons maintenance one night and thinking it was just another big rock in space. Nothing special about it. Now, five years later, I find myself here staring at that big rock again and things are different. Now it makes me feel like there's a place in this galaxy where I just might…belong.

The Crimson Lance picked us young. I'd been with them for as long as I can remember. When Jess…died…all I wanted was to hit back at them any way I could. Make them pay. I had no idea what I would do or where I would go after Fort Knoxx and its general went up in smoke but when someone raises you from childhood to be a soldier it turns out you can't just lay down and die. I kept fighting like I always have because that was all I knew how to do and eventually I found myself up there. With her.

…

My…home.

…

I'm going to get some sleep. I don't know how long this is going to take but I'll deal with it and get back when I can, Janey. Remember our deal. I keep an eye out for any interesting junk to bring back while I'm here and in return you finish that new story book you've been procrastinating on for the last month. I'll be expecting to hear it once I'm finished here. Stay safe, I'll see you soon.

Oh and…good night, hun. Athena, out.

[END ECHOLOG RECORDING 002 – 22:03PM]

[SEND ECHOLOG RECORDING 002 TO CONTACT: Janey Springs? Y/N]

[ECHOLOG SENT]

* * *

A few years ago on Elpis in the city of Concordia. Shortly after Jack's acquisition of the moon's vault and rise to power in Hyperion.

"Ow! Bloody **hell**!"

Janey Springs cried out in frustration as she accidentally brought the heavy barrier to the front of her store crashing down onto her foot. She'd been meaning to fix the thing for weeks knowing it was broken and something like this would happen eventually but a giant space station arriving and bombarding your back garden with laser fire had a way of making you forget about most other things going on in your life.

She looked up at where Helios had been less than a day ago. A few hours after the laser had stopped firing the station had simply upped sticks and left. Janey had been down in her workshop digging through piles of junk when it happened but she had heard some people around the city talking about how it headed in the direction of Pandora, the planet they were orbiting that slightly exploded a while back. She hadn't heard anything from the team of vault hunters Hyperion had hired to poke around Elpis since they shut the laser down so she assumed they had also left.

Athena too.

Janey sighed. That was a real shame. If she had known that ridiculously sexy gladiator was just going to leave without coming to say goodbye she would probably have gone to see her off. Tell her how crazy hot those boots looked on her. Maybe make one last ditch effort to get a date while she was at it. She kneeled down to secure the bottom of the barrier grumbling quietly to herself as she fiddled with the padlock.

"Stupid, sexy vault hunter…literally falling from the stars…being all kinds of pretty …doing badass things all over the place…pointing that perfect butt at my eyeballs…" She continued grumpily muttering for another minute until a voice spoke up behind her.

"Janey"

The blonde girl barely stopped herself from yelping in surprise having gotten thoroughly lost in her dark-haired, blue-eyed, sword-swinging daydream. Her attempt to whirl around from her kneeling position quickly failed and she ended up ungracefully tumbling over onto her behind instead. She was about to berate whoever had snuck up on her before she noticed those familiar weathered red greaves and almost leapt out of the Elpis gravitational pull with excitement.

"Athena!" she exclaimed as she sprung to her feet, the throbbing pain in her foot suddenly a distant memory. "H-how long have you been standing there? I was…just thinking about you! What are you doing here? I thought you'd gone with…"

She pointed to the empty space in the sky previously inhabited by the Hyperion station. Athena's eyes followed her gesture and Janey saw something dark in the gladiator's face. She hadn't known Athena for longer than a couple of days but one thing she liked to think she did know was the look of a person who was hurting but determined not to show it. She had worn that particular look herself more than a few times. She imagined most people on the border planets had at some point. Except the scavs probably, they seemed a little too happy most of the time.

"What…happened out there? Did you find the vault?" Janey asked apprehensively. She knew Athena was tough and all but whatever had gone down in Vorago Solitude was clearly weighing on her pretty heavily.

A slight grimace made its way through the cracks in Athena's emotional blockade. She continued to gaze, or rather glare, at the Elpis sky and then at the distant Pandora for a few seconds before her expression softened somewhat and she looked back to Janey.

"Are you free? Now?" she asked flatly.

"Uh…y-yeah sure!" Janey replied. "You just caught me closing up shop over here. What do you need? If you're looking to use the grinder I can…let ya'll in for a minute."

Athena managed to pull something that almost resembled a smile to her face.

"Not what I had in mind. That drink you offered me earlier? Now would be a **really** good time for it…"


	2. The Gladiator And The Entrepreneur

Janey felt somewhat conflicted as she and Athena made the short walk from her storefront to the Up Over bar.

On the one hand she had to restrain herself from actually skipping with joy at the idea of being on something more or less like a date with the armour-clad woman but, on the other she was too worried about her to really enjoy the feeling. Janey glanced over at the girl walking beside her. Athena moved with her usual flawless, military posture but her eyes looked completely exhausted both mentally and physically. Obvious fatigue aside, she just looked…defeated. Whatever happened had clearly taken its toll on her.

As they climbed the stairs into the bar Janey let out a small sigh. She had been crushing on Athena worryingly hard since the the vault hunter had first fallen into her life from Helios and it was nice to think she might have some romantic intention but she knew the truth was Athena probably just needed someone to talk to. A drinking buddy to drown her sorrows with. It certainly wouldn't be the first girl she'd started to fall for who only really saw her as a novelty. Janey walked over to the bar and seated herself on one of the stools before noticing Athena had stopped in the building's entrance, her eyes scanning the area warily. When it seemed the gladiator was satisfied nothing was waiting to leap out at her she looked to Janey who smiled back and patted the stool next to her. Her own feelings were what they were but if a friend was what Athena needed right now then that was what she would be.

Athena seemed to hesitate and, for a moment, Janey thought she looked about ready to turn and run back out the door. Thankfully, her body seemed to relax slightly and she released her grip on the sword at her waist moving across the room and taking a seat next to the taller woman.

"So what's your poison, then?" Janey asked cheerfully. "The saviour of Elpis gets whatever she wants!"

The gladiator reached up to pull her hood back and Janey immediately wondered if refraining from showering her in lame pick-up lines and compliments would be as easy as she had thought a minute ago. She was pretty. Son of a taint she was pretty. Her short black hair was messy, there were dark circles under her eyes and her face was lightly smudged with dirt but somehow it all only made her look more…wait a minute, was she talking? Damnit, Springs! Stop staring at her like an idiot and **speak words**!

"S-sorry, what did you say?" She stammered. "The…music was…kinda loud there."

Athena raised an eyebrow and suddenly Janey wished she were a better liar. It was a bad save. The music was pretty quiet and for a moment she thought the dark-haired swordswoman's look was knowing.

Athena leaned forward and rested her elbows on the bar surface. "Uh, I said I'd have a Rakk Ale, please. If they have it here I mean. I guess I've only ever seen it on Pandora before."

"Well, Moxxi used to run this place before she ran off yesterday and left the whole place to the claptrap over there" Janey replied as she gestured for the nearby bartender claptrap unit to come over. " **She** came from Pandora so it's worth a shot, right?"

The harsh scowl that flashed across Athena's face at the mention of Mad Moxxi was caught and suppressed as quickly as it appeared but spoke volumes nonetheless. Between that and Moxxi having left in a hurry yesterday with her kind of scary friends Janey was at least able to deduce the two of them had had some kind of major falling out. In the gun-for-hire business a "major falling out" was normally resolved by somebody getting shot and the former owner of the Up Over was as cunning as they came. She wasn't sure who had started whatever had obviously happened between them but, despite her frequent attempts to gain Moxxi's attention before Athena showed up she found herself surprisingly certain she would take the gladiator's side if things got ugly. It made her wonder but she shook the thoughts from her head and returned her attention to the woman sitting next to her.

"Here" she said sliding a bottle along the bar to Athena. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Athena took the bottle of Rakk Ale and stared down at it as if trying to decide where to begin with whatever tale she had to tell. Eventually she gave up, her eyes fell shut and her brow furrowed before she raised the drink to her lips. When she brought the bottle back down it was almost half empty.

"You know I used to work for the Atlas Corporation, right?"

Janey nodded. "Mmhmm. I heard the story of how you turned on them and took the Crimson Lance apart on the ECHOnet a while ago. Exciting stuff!"

"Yeah, well basically when you work for a corporation like Atlas for as long as I have you don't find yourself with an over-abundance of social skills." Athena continued.

The blonde woman resisted the urge to tell her that was bullshit and she was perfectly charming but just barely. Instead she stayed quiet and listened. Janey got the impression someone like Athena didn't bare her soul very often and she wasn't going to be the one to interrupt.

"Atlas is a weapons manufacturer when it comes down to it. They make weapons, not people. Why should a tool for killing know anything more about people than where the blades and bullets go? The idea is they keep pointing you at things they want dead until one of those things finally gets the better of you. You're not supposed to leave. Ever."

The gladiator took another drink before continuing, her eyes seemingly fixed on some point in the empty space in front of her as she spoke.

"But I did. For…a variety of reasons. One of them being I discovered our leaders were completely corrupt. The men and women we trusted to wield us. I didn't notice it until it was practically right in front of my face. That's how they wanted it. Whether they were idiots or madmen or even **literally** toddlers they expected us to do as we were told, not question our commanders. The…training they put us through was supposed to make us that way. As far as they're concerned I'm a defective product."

She paused for a moment before raising her bottle to her lips a third time. When she lowered it again the edge of her mouth curled up into the kind of sad smile that made Janey's heart sink a little bit.

"Now I find myself in more or less that same position again where I took far too long to see who the one giving me orders really was. Maybe someone else would have noticed but I was clueless right up until it didn't matter anymore. Again."

"You're…talking about that Jack fella you were working for? The new Hyperion bigwig?" Janey asked. She had seen very little of him while he was in Concordia during the whole thing with Zarpedon but remembered feeling vaguely uneasy when he was around for some reason. She had never quite been able to put her finger on it.

Athena nodded. "He saved our lives on Helios. His efforts are the reason Elpis and half of Pandora aren't space debris right now. I would say he changed somewhere along the way but I'm not so sure the Jack I thought I knew was ever really there to begin with. Perhaps he simply flushed anything remotely honourable about himself out of the airlock with anything else he couldn't afford to gamble on. Whatever he might have been once he's nothing but a deluded, power-hungry madman now…and I let him use me to get what he wanted."

She took another drink, this time nearly draining the bottle completely. When Athena lowered it again she was pressing her thumb into the neck of the bottle so hard it was trembling. It seemed her carefully maintained stoic demeanour was beginning to crumble be it due to rage, the alcohol or a bit of both. Janey knew she had to do something but hadn't quite found the words yet so she simply reached out and laid a comforting hand on Athena's forearm. Whether the gladiator was using the bottle as a substitute for Jack's trachea or not Janey didn't want her shattering it and injuring herself. The second Janey's hand touched her arm Athena's eyes immediately widened slightly and stared at it as if some kind of venomous creature had crawled onto her. Janey was worried the gladiator might snap her arm off but instead she stared at the blonde's hand for a moment before relaxing and releasing her death grip on the bottle. She sent a perplexed look Janey's way, the woman's unfamiliarity with people touching her who didn't wish her bodily harm making itself obvious. Janey smiled back at her.

"Athena? I know I'm just some random, junk-selling moon girl you met a couple of days ago but, for what it's worth? I'm real glad Atlas couldn't get their fingers in you. You said you're a faulty weapon? Maybe you're right about that. Thing is people aren't **supposed** to be weapons. They're supposed to be people and being one of those means making mistakes sometimes. You're the biggest asskicker I've ever seen and that's bloody awesome! Seriously, Deadlift's crew? Those Lost Legion assholes? They were so far out of their league against you it almost wasn't even funny! But, that said, you're also this incredible, beautiful woman with a big old heart in you. If you **were** just a tool only meant for stabbing things you wouldn't be here fretting over this whole mess. You're great."

She squeezed Athena's arm ever so slightly.

"I think you're great."

Athena stared at her for a few seconds before her lips parted and she took in a small breath as if she were about to say something but paused and the swelling in Janey's chest told her it was time to back off or risk freaking the shorter woman out if she hadn't already. She pulled her hand away from Athena's arm and returned it to her own bottle taking a lengthy drink to try and distract herself. If she kept getting carried away like that Athena might just get up and-

"Hm. Beautiful, huh?"

Janey almost choked on her drink at Athena's sudden comment but miraculously managed not to. Crap, had she actually called her beautiful? Why would she have said that? Well, obviously because it was all kinds of true but she had resolved **not** to try and woo Athena tonight. So much for that Springs, you idiot. The last time she called Athena pretty she remembered the warrior woman getting all tongue-tied in the most adorable way. Maybe the booze was lending her confidence. She looked back over at Athena who was staring down into her bottle again but she could have sworn she saw the slightest hint of a smile on the gladiator's face for a second. Janey felt heat rushing to her cheeks as she attempted to recover.

"I…well, that's just…y'know…my opinion..." Was all she could manage to stammer but the silence that followed was a little awkward to say the least. She wracked her brain for something else to say but just when she thought she had something Athena spoke up again.

"Thank you for this. I don't…I've never really had anyone to talk to about this kind of thing before. It is…helpful."

"You're welcome!" Janey chirped thankful for the change of subject. She held her bottle up in Athena's direction. "To life and all its assorted bastards, right?"

Athena chuckled and gently clinked her bottle against Janey's. "You have…quite the way with words, you know that?".

Janey grinned and shrugged. "Of course I do. I'm a legit author remember?"

A big smile spread across Athena's face and, for a moment, Janey felt like she had conquered the highest of mountains. "I do." The gladiator replied. "Although you may want to refrain from using that line in one of those children's books of yours".

"Spoilsport" Janey mock-pouted. The short silence that followed was far less awkward than the last and more like two people genuinely enjoying eachother's company.

"So…what's next for you?" The blonde woman asked in an attempt to find out how much time Athena would be on Elpis for. She quickly regretted it when the smile almost instantly dropped from the gladiator's face.

"Hm. I…honestly hadn't thought about it." Athena replied "I had expected to come out of that job with enough money to keep me going for a while but it…didn't turn out that way. Now it seems I'm pretty much back to square one. Jack's attention is on Pandora now. I'm in no great hurry to return."

Janey looked Athena up and down, again noting how exhausted she looked. She turned back to her drink and bit her thumb as she pondered. An idea had planted itself in her mind about halfway through their time in the bar and only grown more compelling as time passed. She couldn't stand the thought of Athena just walking back out into the lunar wastes alone in her current state.

"Hey, um…Athena? Would you…like to stay at my place tonight?"

Athena instantly looked up at her, the look on her face one of total bewilderment. Had this woman seriously experienced so few acts of kindness in her life that they confused her so much? No. Janey knew why she might have reason to be hesitant. The black marketeer hadn't exactly been subtle expressing her fondness for the gladiator during her stay on Elpis. If Athena was concerned Janey's only thought was to get into her pants she supposed she couldn't really blame her but, while her feelings for Athena had only gotten more serious over the course of the evening, her foremost intention was to tend to Athena's well-being. Although, if the gladiator suddenly decided to tear Janey's clothes off and kiss every inch of her body for whatever reason she doubted she would find it in herself to complain. A girl could dream after all.

"I'm not…I mean, I won't make it...weird or anything. I just think maybe you could use a decent night's sleep. Maybe take a shower?"

Athena blinked and Janey realised how that must have sounded.

"N-not that you smell **bad** or anything! You just…I always feel better after a shower is all." She shrugged and gave Athena a sheepish smile. "Couldn't hurt, right?"

Athena continued to stare at her dumbfounded for a moment longer before she looked away.

"Janey, I…"

"Just for one night!" the blonde woman quickly interjected. "If slumber parties really aren't your thing then feel free to leave first thing tomorrow, I just…I don't like the thought of ya'll sleeping in rags or worse out there. You might find Elpis is worse than Pandora in its own special way…"

Athena looked down at her empty bottle. "Sleeping rough comes with the profession" she stated matter-of-factly.

"I know" Janey replied. "I get that, but just for tonight you don't need to. Consider it a favour to me?"

Athena was quiet for what seemed like a long time before speaking.

"Alright. Okay. I will…pay you back somehow of cour-"

"Nuh uh!" Janey interrupted. "You're doing **me** a favour remember?"

Before the woman in red could object Janey quickly finished her drink and paid the robot at the bar having to quickly remind and then convince the claptrap that it ran the place in Moxxi's absence before rising from her stool and offering Athena a hand. "Shall we go then, my lady?" she said in her best sophisticated voice.

To Janey's surprise Athena, after a second's hesitation, actually did somewhat timidly reach out and take her hand. Janey smiled and helped the battle-weary woman to her feet before letting Athena's gloved fingers leave her own. She would have liked to have held her hand all the way to her place but she also didn't want to push her luck too far too quickly. She would be ecstatic if something eventually ended up happening with Athena but for now she just wanted the gladiator to be okay.

Her hand was still trying to shake off its longing for the touch of Athena's by the time they walked out of the bar into the street when she suddenly felt Athena's fingers close around hers again. She looked at the woman walking beside her who had already pulled up her hood again partially obscuring her face.

"It...seems the alcohol here is more powerful than on Pandora." she muttered quietly. "Would you mind lending me a hand? For support."

That was odd. Janey was notorious for being terrible at holding her drink but she felt fine. Rakk Ale wasn't even that strong. She pondered on how much of a lightweight one would have to be to get wobbly after one bottle of the stuff when a thought so wonderful it made her heart skip a beat occurred to her.

Athena's blue eyes looked up to meet hers briefly before looking away again.

"Perhaps I drank it too quickly"

Janey couldn't help the broad smile that grew across her face as she gently squeezed the gladiator's hand in response. If she was right, and she really hoped she was, then Athena was an even worse liar than she was.

"Heh, perhaps. Come on, my place isn't too far, just a few levels down. There's a mostly comfy sofa with your name on it. Not literally though. That'd be weird even for me."

Athena smiled and the two began the walk to Janey's apartment. It took a few steps for Janey to notice Athena had removed her glove sometime between leaving the bar and taking her hand. The skin on her fingers was somewhat calloused by what Janey imagined were decades of swinging that sword of hers around but the blonde still relished the shorter woman's touch and a pleasant, warm feeling spread up her arm. Under the circumstances Janey decided to allow herself a small deviation from her whole "don't hit on Athena, just be her friend if that's what she needs" plan and gently worked her fingers in-between Athena's intertwining them. For a moment she was worried she may have gone too far and Athena might let go but instead she felt her hand being clutched tighter.

Whatever else might have happened that night, Janey was happy with this. This was good.


	3. Loyalty To The Mission Is One Thing

"Well, this is me!" Janey said cheerfully as she all but dragged Athena by the hand to her door.

Concordia was far vaster than the gladiator had assumed on her previous visits. She had walked the streets and even the rooftops of the old Dahl spaceport city but she hadn't realised how far it stretched downward into the moon's surface before now. The lower levels were mostly storage areas and old living quarters for Dahl soldiers before the corporation had packed up and left, now converted into basic apartments for those who had moved in since then. It had probably all looked very uniform back in the day but now the underground halls were covered in graffiti as well as various wanted posters and advertisements. The door to Janey's home was easy to spot. Her name was scrawled across it in brightly coloured paint accompanied by several stick figures and the phrase "PICKLE WOZ ERE!" written with a different colour for each letter like a loud, cockney rainbow. Somewhat more interesting than a nameplate Athena thought.

The blonde woman let go of Athena's hand to open the door, her fingers slipping away from the gladiator's grasp and leaving her surprised by how much she immediately missed Janey's touch. She pulled the glove she had removed back onto her hand and tried her best to compose herself.

It frustrated her. She was a **warrior** , not some blushing schoolgirl. This kind of behaviour was unacceptable. Athena may not have turned out quite the way Atlas had wanted but the doctrine they had spent decades hammering into her head was still there in the back of her mind. She had broken free of them without losing her life in the process but she carried those decades spent as an Atlas assassin wherever she went like an angry superior officer barking in her ear, always there to quickly and sternly remind her she had no business inviting any amount of softness into her life. It wasn't the Atlas way.

Sometimes Athena had to wonder just how "free" she really was.

Her previous employers had always claimed the long list of horrific things they had subjected the assassins to since abducting them as children had eliminated all traces of weakness from them. Any capability to feel love, affection or anything else they thought might distract them from the kill had been forcibly and thoroughly removed. They told her they had killed something inside of her. A useless, troublesome thing they assured her she was better off without and, in over twenty years of doing their dirty work for them, Athena had encountered no reason to doubt that. The Atlas logic was that finding a little girl and forcing her to kill her own parents before dragging her away into a life of unrelenting hardship would empty her out. Leave her hollow enough for them to replace whatever she used to be with what they needed her to be. The instructors had never liked anything more than a blank canvas to work with.

Well, that was the idea at least. If the incident with Athena's sister that led to her turning on Atlas had taught the gladiator anything it was that the process apparently hadn't quite worked as well as it should have on her. She was supposed to be completely barren of all emotions except the bloodlust and desire for victory expected of an Atlas operative, but the first time Janey had expressed an interest in her that part of herself she thought long dead had begun to stir again. It was the smallest sign of life. Barely there, but it was more than enough to catch Athena completely off her guard and make her heart beat faster. She had tried to ignore it at the time. Her mission on Elpis was too important to have the grinning, blonde scrap dealer popping up in her head every few minutes but she quickly found it wasn't quite as simple as that.

Normally when someone showed an attraction to Athena it was a simple matter. She told them she wasn't interested, perhaps broke something if they refused to get the message, and that was the end of it but, as Janey continued to pursue her Athena had found herself unwilling to offer any kind of discouragement. In fact, she had felt inexplicably drawn to the blonde taking any excuse she could to visit her whenever Athena's team of vault hunters passed through Concordia, usually under the guise of needing to use the grinder machine or asking a question she didn't really need the answer to. One particularly embarrassing moment was when she went to see Janey at her store in one of her spare moments but, when the girl had asked her if she needed something, Athena had panicked and ended up throwing three of her best guns into the grinder rather than simply tell Janey she wanted to see her.

Whatever kind of spark Janey's advances had caused in Athena it was all uncharted territory for the gladiator but, however worrying it was, however much that voice in her head told her she wasn't and never would be built for this, she felt a strange compulsion to see where it might go.

Apparently the first step in doing that was making a fool of herself. When Athena had taken the hand Janey had offered her back in the bar she had been unprepared for how pleasant it felt. All she had been able to think about when Janey let go was how the taller girl's hand might feel in hers without the glove and the curiosity had gotten the better of her. She hadn't even thought to come up with a believable reason why she reached out and took the scrap dealers hand again. Athena winced as a powerful cringe ran through her body at the fresh memory. So drunk she couldn't walk straight after one bottle of Rakk Ale? She really couldn't think of anything better than that?

"Um…Athena?"

The gladiator immediately snapped out of her introspective daydream at the sound of Janey's voice. It seemed she had finally gotten the door open but was positioned halfway inside it with a somewhat sheepish look on her face.

"Could you wait here for just a sec? I uh…I just remembered I need to clean up a little! I wasn't really expecting guests. Just…just wait here for **literally** ten seconds, I'll be right back."

The blonde hurriedly retreated inside the door closing it behind her but barely a second passed before it opened again and Janey's head popped out.

"Don't go anywhere, okay?"

The door closed again leaving Athena alone in the hallway. Out of habit she glanced left and right in search of suspicious movement but her attention was quickly drawn back to Janey's colourful door by the sounds of frantic scrambling inside.

* * *

The posters. How could she have forgotten about the bloody Moxxi posters?

Janey sprinted around her apartment like a tork gone mad, rapidly tearing any picture of the busty bar owner she could find off her walls. She had pulled together quite the collection over the course of her brief crush on the older woman so it took a bit longer than she thought to completely strip her home of Moxxi's visage. Again, it surprised Janey just how immediately she was able to completely cast her fondness for Moxxi aside the second Athena appeared in her life. It might have made her feel kind of fickle but even she knew Moxxi had never seen her as anything other than a pain and a nuisance. The closest thing Janey had to a sensible, realistic part of her mind had always told her nothing would ever happen with the painted businesswoman but she had an inherent charm about her she couldn't turn off even if she tried. Also, boobs.

Regardless, the unrequited attraction she had had for Moxxi already paled in comparison to her growing feelings for the armoured woman outside her door.

She quickly finished removing every poster from her home before stuffing the crumpled pile of tattooed breasts and puckered lips into the back of her wardrobe and taking one last look around to make sure she got everything then rushing back to the door. Having half-expected Athena to have gotten bored and left she was pleased to see she was still standing where she had left her albeit looking slightly confused.

"Everything okay in there?" the gladiator asked tilting her head slightly to try and see past Janey.

"Yeah! Of course!" Janey replied a little more enthusiastically than she had meant to. "Just ah...I didn't want you seeing my gross underwear all over the place is all."

She laughed. Mostly as a way to defuse the situation's awkwardness but also out of disbelief that that was seriously the first excuse she could think of. She found it funny that she would rather Athena think her a slob who tossed her unmentionables just wherever than know she had a thing for the woman she had apparently been feuding with lately. The last thing she wanted after managing to get Athena to agree to spend the night was for her to feel uncomfortable.

"Wouldn't want to scare you away or anything". Janey hadn't planned for the sentence to come out quite as sultry and flirtatious as it did but there it was. Athena seemed somewhat taken aback for a moment before she shook her head and grinned. The junk dealer liked to think she saw a slight seductive glint in the gladiator's eye but wishful thinking had always been Janey's thing.

"A month ago I was sleeping in an abandoned skag den." Athena said, shrugging. "Whatever laundry situation you have in there, I'm certain we can deal with it."

"What's a skag? Some kind of terrible, Pandoran beastie?" Janey asked. She had always been kind of intrigued by Pandora but all she ever seemed to hear about it was how many horrible ways to die there were down there.

"You…could say that?" Athena replied with uncertainty "More of a pest really. Pandora has far more dangerous creatures."

"Well, fortunately my apartment does not. Come on in." the blonde junk seller said gesturing into her home.

Athena hesitated for a second before somewhat awkwardly moving forward past Janey into the apartment.

"…thank you." The gladiator murmured as she moved past.

Janey couldn't help but grin widely. "Weapons at the door, please!" she added before closing the door behind them.

* * *

One sizable pile of weapons by the door later the two had moved into the apartment's front room. Athena glanced around taking in her surroundings. For something apparently converted from an old soldier's quarters, and a Dahl soldier at that, the black marketeer had managed to make it very homely. In the centre of the room were a sofa and two chairs, none of them belonging to the same set. A few other mismatched pieces of furniture stood against the walls, probably gradually collected spoils from Janey's scavenging career. Decorations hung from the walls, a carved wooden mask, old Mercenary Day lights and an idyllic painting of blue skies and green grass. A planet far from here.

Janey spun around in the centre of the room and spread out her arms. "So, this is where I sleep when I'm not passing out at my desk! What do you think?"

"It's nice." Athena replied. "I didn't think old Dahl quarters would be so…roomy."

"I know, right? It turns out running a business that provides most of the bits and pieces that keep the city running ended up nabbing me an old officer's place. There's a few of them down here. I think maybe this was a general's place or something before Dahl took off. It's got a kitchen and a bathroom and everything! Oh, speaking of which…"

Janey raised her finger and pointed it a door to Athena's left.

"…bathroom is through there. If you want to go check out the shower I'll get started on some dinner. Sound good?"

Athena glanced at the bathroom door. Everything about Athena's demeanour radiated awkwardness. The woman looked about as far out of her comfort zone as one could be but, if that comfort zone was out in the wastes searching for scraps to eat and an oxygenated shed to sleep in while scavs shot at her then Janey was all too happy to offer the gladiator an alternative. Athena looked back to Janey and gave her a small, tired smile.

"I…yeah. Okay. That…does sound good."

She turned and began to move towards the bathroom door when Janey remembered something.

"Oh! Hang on a second!"

She ran over to a nearby set of drawers and pulled out a few folded, grey bits of clothing before walking back over and thrusting them into Athena's hands.

"Let me take your clothes first!"

Athena's eyes went very round and her lips parted as if about to say something but were interrupted by the sound of Janey facepalming, her hand slapping loudly against her forehead and then just resting there as she frowned beneath it.

"Obviously…" She said with no small amount of embarrassment, pinching the bridge of her nose as her eyes clenched shut "…what I **meant** by that was I'll put them in the wash while you're in there and you can wear those until they're done."

Again, Athena opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted.

"Anyway! You go ahead, take as long as you need. Just leave your armour and stuff outside the door and I'll get it cleaned up for tomorrow. I'm gonna go get some food ready. I'll be through here in the kitchen if you need me. Okay? Okay."

Janey quickly hurried off through the doorway behind her and around a corner before Athena could respond. Probably just as well. Coherent sentences seemed to abandon the gladiator whenever Janey was involved, replaced by more of the um'ing and ah'ing she seemed to be becoming fluent at since meeting the blonde. She looked to the small pile of clothes in her hands and pondered when the last time she had been given anything to wear that wasn't Atlas-approved was. "Never" was probably the answer there, or at least far too long ago for her to recall.

This evening had already been abundant with things the gladiator had never experienced before but, for some reason, this one was hitting her harder than most. She closed her eyes and gripped the clothes tighter, just taking a second to silently appreciate the gesture and commit the moment to memory. If nothing else came of this, if Athena left tomorrow morning and never saw Janey again, she wanted to at least remember this. The unfamiliar, somewhat overwhelming feeling of someone actually caring about her.

**Idiot.**

**Foolish child.**

**Weakling.**

The barking voice of her old Atlas instructor in her head let her know in no uncertain terms how it felt about the sentiment. It urged her to throw the soft clothes in her hands down and stride proudly back out into the world of blood and battle in which she belonged. She glanced at the door that led back out in the Concordia hallway behind her. She could be out of that door and probably out of Concordia altogether before Janey came back. The thought was there. It would likely be better for everyone if she left.

And yet there she was, still standing in the middle of Janey's front room holding the girl's pyjamas in her hands.

She shoved the temptation from her mind before turning and walking through the bathroom door, closing it behind her.

* * *

It felt like forever since she had shed her armour. It was pretty much a second skin by this point but it had seen far better days. Her old assassin suit had fallen into disrepair without Atlas resources to maintain it. Athena had tried her best to keep it from falling apart entirely but what she could do was limited and what was left looked ragged at best. She removed her one remaining pauldron and her dented chestplate followed by her gauntlet and then her boots. With all of the metal parts of her suit removed she took off her hood and scarf, her gloves and then the swiftsuit she wore under her armour leaving her standing in the middle of the bathroom in her plain, military underwear. She glanced sideways at the mirror on the wall. Her extensive collection of scars had grown since she had taken up mercenary work, the most recent being an angry red gash in her right shoulder she had obtained from her team's fight with the guardian of Eleseer. She had already treated it with an insta-health but it would likely still leave behind a nasty mark once fully healed. Her body was toned but thinner than was probably healthy. Meals often didn't come easy in her line of work. When she got a job she would eat. If not? Well, that was why she had ended up taking Jack's offer to begin with.

She slipped out of her underwear and added them to the mound of armour and carefully folded clothing she had assembled before sliding it out of the bathroom door as her bubbly, blonde host had instructed. Athena couldn't shake the feeling of vulnerability being without both her armour and weapons but Janey was right, her suit had been in need of cleaning for a while now but being a wandering mercenary meant opportunities to attend to her laundry were exceedingly rare. She stepped into the shower and hit the activation switch releasing a sigh as she felt her muscles instantly begin to relax under the torrent of hot water. She ran her fingers through her hair attempting wash the lunar dust out of it before wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing her shoulders just trying to relieve some of the tension she was feeling.

Athena liked to think she was a practical woman. She had never been one to waste time with denial. She liked Janey Springs. She liked her in a confusing way she was utterly unfamiliar with. Admitting that to herself in private was easy but she knew admitting it to the grinning blonde bundle of cute outside would be a great many times more difficult. She didn't even know where to start with something like this. Most people learned how to deal with it at some point in their early life but Athena hadn't had that luxury.

She leaned forward against the shower wall letting her wet hair fall over her face and the water flow down her back while she desperately attempted to pull herself together. She needed to stay in control. Control over her own life was all she had left. No home, no family, no money but her mind was her own. That was what she told herself on the nights she slept in the cold dirt with an empty stomach but right now all of that mental discipline of hers barely counted for anything.

Hiding in the shower until she figured out what to do was tempting but, not only did she realise Janey's hot water was probably finite, but it would be cowardly. Athena knew she was a lot of things but never a coward. She hadn't become the Crimson Lance's top operative by hiding from her enemies but this time there **was** no enemy. Athena had been raised to deal with problems by stabbing them. Her life rarely presented her with situations in which that solution wasn't an option. Combat was easy. Simple. This was something she just wasn't equipped to deal with.

She looked into the palm of her hand remembering the feeling of Janey's fingers against hers and suddenly, inexplicably, every bit of the frustration building up inside her simply fell away. Her muscles relaxed and her mind calmed.

She wasn't prepared for this, but she had never run from anything in her life and she wasn't about to start now.

When Athena was finished she stepped out of the shower and used a towel to dry herself. Once she had dried her hair she pulled the towel away from her head and looked in the mirror. The vigorous towel-drying she had given it had caused her short, black hair to wildly stick out in practically every direction. She had never really cared much about her appearance or how other people perceived her but now she felt oddly self-conscious.

She picked one of the garments off the small pile Janey had given her and unfolded it holding it out in front of her. She grimaced slightly as she instantly noticed a small problem with them she felt like she should have spotted sooner.

"Well, that's…unfortunate."

She glanced at herself in the mirror once more before shrugging and pulling the top over her head.

* * *

" **Let me take your clothes.** "

"That's great. Good job, Springs."

Janey pulled the switch on her washing machine and stepped back as it buzzed into life. She had placed the metal parts of Athena's suit in a separate machine she used to clean the filth off of the pieces of junk she brought back with her whenever she ventured out into the wastes. Satisfied the job was done she walked back into the kitchen to check on dinner. She was just piling the grilled rathyd she had prepared onto a plate and seasoning it when she heard the door to the bathroom open.

"You find the shower okay?" She called into the front room while she was grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge. "Sometimes it just needs a good kick to get it going".

"It was fine." was the simple answer she received from through the doorway.

"Bonzer! Make yourself at home in there. I'll be through with your grand banquet in just a sec."

Janey opened the two beers and put them along with the plate onto a metal tray. She briefly considered digging around to see if she had a romantic candle anywhere but decided against it. Picking up the tray she began to walk through into the front room but stopped dead in the doorway, not prepared for the sight that awaited her.

Athena was about 5'2. Not the tallest lady. Janey on the other hand was a full six feet and never before had the height gap between the two women been more obvious than right now.

The sleeves and legs of the pyjamas Janey had loaned Athena were far too long for the gladiator's comparatively short limbs with the tips of her toes and fingers barely poking out of the ends. Athena had also tied her hair back into a tiny ponytail that worked **way** too well for her.

Janey knew keeping her attraction to the gladiator in check would be difficult from the moment she had invited her home but this was something else entirely.

"Ahah…s-sorry, I toootally didn't think about our size difference there. My bad. Wow, those little heels on your boots really do wonders don't they."

Shut up. Shut up. Stop calling her short. Shut up.

Fortunately Athena's attention had been far too fixed on the tray Janey was carrying since she entered the room to really acknowledge her comment. The blonde had no idea how long it had been since the gladiator had last eaten but the look in her eyes was similar to that of a puppy trying to deal with someone dangling a steak in front of its face. Janey quickly took the opportunity for a change of subject.

"Anyway, I made these! Nothing fancy but this stuff and old Dahl ration packs are basically what I live off these days."

She set the tray down on the overturned crate that served as her coffee table and grabbed one of the beers seating herself on a chair opposite Athena. She picked up a piece of rathyd and was about to bite into when she noticed Athena was just sitting there staring at the plate. Janey thought back to that moment in the bar when she had wondered how little kindness Athena must have received in her life to look so shocked at Janey's offer of shelter for the night. If that was really the case she could kind of understand the trouble the gladiator might be having right now. If Janey had to do a little work to help her along then she was fine with that.

"Athena?"

The gladiator's eyes immediately snapped up from the mound of food to look at her. Janey reached over and offered the piece in her hand.

"Here. Try some. I'm not the best cook but it's hard to go wrong with grilled rathyd."

Athena hesitated for a moment before all but snatching the piece of meat from Janey's hand and sinking her teeth into it, the woman's hunger getting the better of her. After barely chewing her first mouthful she swallowed and finished the rest of the piece in two more huge bites. She quickly realised she had lost control and chewed the last bite more thoroughly looking more than a little embarrassed. Janey smiled and slid the tray a few inches across the crate in Athena's direction.

"Come on, dig in! I can't finish this whole thing by myself."

She smiled at her guest who was clearly still uncomfortable with somebody doing something nice for her without expecting anything in return but, thankfully, her empty stomach spoke louder than her insecurities.

"Thank you…" she muttered as she reached for a second piece.

Over the next few minutes Janey deliberately ate very little wanting to leave the majority of the shared meal to Athena. She had eaten that day. That week even. She wasn't sure Athena could say the same. She looked worryingly spindly. When the gladiator had eaten so fast she began to choke Janey had quickly passed her the second beer to wash it down with and when they were done with the meal she cleared the tray away. After just setting it down somewhere in the kitchen to deal with later she returned to the front room and sat down on the sofa next to Athena.

"Now, I don't know how highly you rate dumb late-night ECHOnet shows but tonight the latest episode of my favourite got released so for the next half hour leave your brain at the door and behold the majesty that is Big Pete's Scrapyard Laboratory!"

Athena shrugged. "My ECHO device is military issue. Recordings and communication only. Atlas didn't allow civilian broadcasts. "

"That is…" Janey replied glaring sideways at Athena "… **all kinds** of tragic. Remind me before you leave and I'll tweak your gear a little bit. Get you some of this quality entertainment. The least one can hope for after a day of getting shot at is being able to watch a bunch of idiots almost blow themselves up trying to make a motorcycle out of a toilet after all". A brief laugh escaped Athena's lips and Janey thought it might just be the prettiest sound she had ever heard.

She picked up a nearby remote pointing it in the direction of the display unit she had attached to the wall and pressing a button. The screen turned on and a loud, energetic female voice immediately erupted from the speakers.

"A cybernetic limb! I could program all of DT's digistruct data into one robotic arm, and use that to summon DT at any time, any place! So I figure, what the heck, and I slice off the rest of my arm with a particle saw!"

Janey quickly hit another button and the voice stopped.

"Agh! Sorry, it must be playing what I was watching last. Some ECHOcast about this Eden-5 girl building a robot for her science fair or something. Seemed kind of cool. Anyway! Let's get to it."

Janey hit the button again and the show began. Over the next thirty minutes or so Janey was happy to notice Athena's tense posture relax considerably. It seemed like she was beginning to feel more comfortable in Janey's presence.

The show was just starting to come to an end when Janey felt something against her shoulder. Turning to her left she saw that Athena had completely fallen asleep, her head coming to rest on the junk dealers shoulder. Janey should have known. Athena had been fighting to stay awake all night and it seemed she had finally reached her limit. Janey had no idea how long she had been awake for but clearly too long to be healthy.

The temptation to simply stay there and fall asleep beside Athena was a powerful one but she resisted. Worming her way out from under Athena's head she gently lay the slumbering gladiator down across the sofa on her side and retrieved a blanket she carefully draped over her. When she had made sure her guest was comfortable she sat on the sofa beside her, taking just a moment to look at her. All of the tension in Athena's face and body had just evaporated and, for the first time since Janey had met her, she looked at peace.

The blonde girl forced herself to get up and leave the gladiator's side but as she was doing so she heard sleepy mumbling from behind her.

"Janey?"

She turned around. Athena's eyes were still closed and she hadn't moved. It seemed she was barely awake.

"Yeah?" Janey replied.

"You are…also very beautiful…"

"What?"

"Earlier…you called me beautiful…I wanted to…return the compliment…you are…as well…"

Janey opened her mouth to try and respond but suddenly found herself completely without words. The exhausted woman on the sofa was able to mumble out just one more thing before drifting back off into sleep.

"Too beautiful…for this place…"

Janey smiled. She couldn't not. Allowing herself to follow her feelings, just for a moment, she sat back down onto the sofa beside Athena and leant over to lightly press her lips to the slumbering gladiator's cheek lingering just a little bit longer than she had promised herself she would. When she raised her head again she was surprised to see Athena's eyes open again and look up at her. She said nothing simply staring up into Janey's eyes with an expression the junk dealer was unable to read, but there was an intensity in the gladiator's gaze that made the blonde suddenly feel very flustered.

Every single fibre of Janey's being urged her to give in. To simply lean down one more time only this time to catch Athena's lips instead but she didn't. She couldn't. Wishful thinking aside, she felt like there was a mutual attraction between them but, if there was a chance pushing the gladiator too far too fast would cause her to freak out and run then Janey couldn't risk it. Not if a little patience might make all the difference. Instead she smiled down at her and reached up to brush a lock of hair that had escaped Athena's ponytail back behind her ear. It was an intimate gesture but it was all she could do to resist her compulsions. She gently stroked her thumb across Athena's cheek hoping it was enough to communicate even a fraction of what she was feeling right now.

"Good night, Athena." she said softly. "I'll see you tomorrow. Don't…go running off before I wake up or anything, okay?"

Athena paused but didn't break eye contact for even a second.

"…I won't."

"Good. Sweet dreams, yeah?"

With a lot of effort Janey pulled her hand away from Athena's cheek and rose from the sofa again. Once she was in her own room with the door closed she sat on her bed and buried her face in her hands. Athena was leaving tomorrow. Possibly forever. Janey couldn't afford to fall for her as hard as she was and yet she couldn't help herself. She flopped down onto her back and stared up at the ceiling sighing and closing her eyes as she muttered quietly to the empty room.

"You sure know how to pick 'em, Springs…"


	4. Loyalty To People Is Something Else

Fingernails running up her thigh. Lips brushing against her ear. A knee riding up between her legs. A gasp filled Athena's lungs and her chest rose sharply as those lips drifted down her neck and lightly pinched her collarbone. A desperate moan followed. Was that her voice? Impossible. She tried to open her eyes but it was as if everything around her was made of light. The brightness stung her eyes like walking out into the sun after years in the dark. The lips left her collarbone and she could just barely make out a single pink streak of hair rise into view followed by a familiar grin. Athena felt the hand on her thigh slip under her top and slowly travel up her torso. The gladiator tried to move but she felt like every bit of strength in her body had simply fallen away. The grin and pink streak moved closer and she heard a familiar voice thick with Elpis accent.

"Athena? You're **real** pretty…"

The lips continued to move closer until they were so close Athena could feel their every breath ghost over her own.

"…just throwing that out there…"

Athena woke up thrashing and panting, only just managing to avoid tumbling off the sofa completely. She clutched at her chest desperately trying to slow her breathing and keep her heart from hammering out of her ribcage. Just when she was beginning to wonder what the hell had just happened her tall, blonde host appeared in the kitchen doorway. She wore a wide-eyed, startled expression like the face of someone who had just been woken by a gunshot.

"Bloody hell! What is it? What's wrong?" Janey asked in a panic.

"W-what?" Athena responded, still utterly flustered.

"You uh…you called my name just now?" The concern in Janey's face slowly drained, replaced with mild confusion.

"I…did?"

"Yeah, you sounded like a thresher had you by the head in here!" The blonde girl raised an eyebrow. "Are you alright?"

"Yes…I'm fine. No need to worry."

Had she called out Janey's name? She couldn't remember doing anything of the sort.

"What time is it?" Athena asked rubbing her eyes.

"Oh. Um, it's actually getting into late afternoon. I kept thinking about waking you but you looked like you really needed the sleep there".

She looked a little sheepish. Guilty almost but, while Athena would have preferred not to have slept through the day, she couldn't bring herself to be upset with Janey for being concerned about her well-being. Instead the gladiator continued to stare at the blonde blankly for a second or two before her eyes drifted to the single pink streak of hair laying against the woman's left cheek and her heart jumped a little in her chest. The bizarre dream was still fresh in her mind. She pulled her eyes away as she felt heat rushing to her face, swinging her feet out of the blanket onto the cold metal floor and running her hands into her hair.

What is wrong with you?

**Snap out of it.**

"Alright…" Athena eventually responded. Her voice came out sounding uncharacteristically shaky and fragile but, thankfully, if Janey noticed she didn't say anything. A moment of silence passed between the two women before the blonde smiled and spoke again.

"To be honest I was just about to look into waking you anyway so great timing! Come on in here, I've got something to show you."

"I…actually need to-". Athena briefly attempted to protest but Janey had already vanished into the kitchen humming to herself.

The gladiator sighed and rose from the sofa. Following Janey into the kitchen she was about to continue her objection when the scent of something incredible slammed into Athena's nostrils the second she stepped into the room. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the small table and two chairs in the middle of the room. On the table rested two plates, one of which had several flat, circular objects Athena had never seen before piled upon it. Janey was busy at the stove but turned her head enough to nod towards the empty chair in front of the mound of wonderful-smelling discs.

"Go on then! I can't possibly have you departing Janey Springs' hospitality without breakfast at least."

No. Ask her where your armour is. You need to go. You've lingered here for too long already. Just get back into your suit and-

 **What are you doing?** Don't sit down, you idiot. You can't stay here. You can't-

"So…what am I looking at here?" Athena regarded the mysterious items on the plate in front of her as she sat down with a mixture of confusion and caution picking up a nearby fork and prodding one lightly.

"They're called pancakes!" Janey replied as if she had been waiting for that question. "I kinda hit the jackpot and found a few packs of them in the freezer when I moved in. Whoever lived here before me had quite a sweet tooth apparently. Try some, they're good!"

The blonde finished preparing her own helping before walking over and taking a seat opposite Athena. She cut off a big piece of one of the pancakes and popped it into her mouth starting to talk again before she had finished her mouthful.

"These are my last lot actually."

She swallowed her food and grinned.

"I guess you could say I've been saving them for a special occasion." she said looking squarely in Athena's direction.

"You…are too good to me." the gladiator replied, staring down at her food awkwardly.

It would have probably caused her to feel far less uncomfortable if Janey had said she expected something in return for all this but she didn't. She just kept on grinning like it was totally normal to just invite people into your home for food and shelter as well as what was likely an incredibly rare delicacy in this corner of space knowing they had nothing to give you for it. It bothered Athena because it went against everything she thought she knew about life on the border planets. About life in general really. She knew hundreds of protocols for dealing with people being hostile towards her but for someone like Janey? Nothing. She was…an anomaly.

"Hmmm. Nah. I think I'm exactly the right amount of good to you" she heard the blonde retort from across the small table.

Athena looked up just in time to catch the wink Janey sent her way. She quickly looked back to her food and began eating to try and distract herself from the vague fluttering sensation in her stomach.

What is happening to me?

"Did you sleep alright on my lumpy sofa by the way?"

Janey's question immediately caused the gladiator's strange dream to rush through her mind again and she almost choked on the mouthful she was working on but hammered her chest a couple of times and managed to recover.

"Y-yes. I did. It was fine. Thank you."

It was true. Disregarding her awakening, she couldn't remember the last time she had slept that well. She hadn't felt this good in a long time. When you only ever got an hour or two of rest a night if you were lucky it was easy to forget what being completely rejuvenated felt like.

The two women ate mostly in silence for the next few minutes until Janey spoke again.

"Hey, listen…"

The blonde scratched the back of her head and frowned slightly. She looked somewhat uneasy but continued regardless.

"I know we said just one night but if you haven't figured out what to do about leaving yet then you're totally free to…stick around a bit longer. You know, if you like."

Athena froze. The blonde had hit the nail on the head. The gladiator had planned to use last night to consider how she could possibly get off Elpis and back to Pandora with her current lack of funds but…

She glanced up at Janey who was, thankfully, not looking in her direction and focusing on her food. Athena felt a strange feeling wash over her. A complete lack of a need to do anything other than sit right there and watch the blonde junk-dealer eat. Or talk. Or do pretty much anything come to think of it. It worried her. It seemed just being near the blonde was affecting her efficiency in ways she couldn't have predicted. Instead of contemplating where her next job might be or how to replenish her dangerously low ammunition supplies with only a few dollars to her name she was sitting here wearing oversized pyjamas eating breakfast with an impossible woman who made her feel like she might be going crazy.

"I couldn't impose…" the gladiator eventually replied.

Janey laughed. "It may surprise you to hear this Athena, but, for one reason or another, I'm not exactly the most popular of people around these parts."

She shrugged and looked down to her food, poking the last few pieces of pancake around with her fork.

"Having some company is nice for a change, y'know?"

Athena's whole body turned rigid as the idea of simply **not** returning to Pandora took root in her mind for the first time. She could feel herself fighting the concept but she had to wonder why she was so determined to get back down there. If her time on Elpis had taught her anything it was that a mercenaries' services were needed here as much as they were on Pandora, only there wasn't as much competition to deal with. No bastard, leg-biting skags either.

It was strange. Normally that ever-present, chastising voice in her head would have done its best to prevent her from considering the idea any further and she could certainly hear it ranting away in the back of her mind about how ridiculous and pathetic she was being by even thinking about it but, for better or worse, Janey's presence seemed to make the voice…quieter. Easier to ignore.

"…I'll think about it."

A non-committal answer was all she could offer. Her mind was in far too chaotic a state right now for anything else.

"I have something I need to do though. Is my armour…"

"Oh! Yeah it's all cleaned up." Janey said gesturing at the door to the front room. "I put it in a pile over near the bathroom door"

"Okay" Athena replied before setting her cutlery down on her empty plate and rising from her chair.

"Thanks. For breakfast".

She began walking into the front room. Eager to make herself combat-ready again but, as she was walking away from the table she heard Janey's voice behind her.

"Will you be back?"

Athena stopped in the doorway. Her first instinct was to throw out another evasive response. A vague "maybe" or "we'll see" in case she somehow managed to stumble across a way back to Pandora while she was out but she knew she wasn't going anywhere. Not yet.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the blonde woman sitting at the kitchen table.

Athena hadn't decided whether to stay on Elpis indefinitely yet, but for now Pandora could wait. There would always be room for one more penniless vagabond with a gun down there. No need to rush.

The corner of Janey's mouth curled up into a somewhat anxious smile as she awaited the gladiator's answer.

No need at all.

"Yeah" she said attempting to sound as casual about it as she could. "I…shouldn't be long".

When Athena turned away again to leave she could almost feel the intensity of Janey's smile behind her. She crossed the room, grabbing the various pieces of her suit and going into the bathroom to change. When she had armoured up and left the bathroom Janey was nowhere in sight but before Athena had a chance to do much of anything the blonde's face appeared from around the corner in the kitchen. She looked the gladiator up and down before a wide grin spread across her face.

"Hey, lookin' good!" she said giving a thumbs up. "Wait a sec though, looks like I forgot something".

She rushed over into the small room in which her washing machines were kept and pulled something out of the dryer. When she turned around she was holding Athena's scarf in her hands. The gladiator had to take a brief moment to internally lament how distracted she was. She would have had to have been to just completely overlook something like that. Especially her scarf.

"Sorry, I must have left this behind when I was getting your suit ready. Here."

Athena held out her hand for Janey to put the scarf in but instead the blonde moved past it draping the scarf on the shorter girl's shoulders and wrapping it loosely around her neck. She tugged the front of the scarf to straighten it and smiled down at the shorter woman.

"There. Can't have you catching a cold can we? Elpis can be a little chilly for you out-of-towners."

Athena couldn't bring herself to meet Janey's eyes, instead choosing to stare down at the girl's collar bone. Anywhere but her eyes. If she did she felt like there was a chance she simply would not be able to summon up the conviction to walk away from her.

"I'll be fine." Athena replied. She stepped back and turned away, her scarf slipping from Janey's hands.

She pulled up her hood in an attempt to distance herself a little. If she was going to weigh up the pros and cons of life on Elpis she knew she couldn't do it here. Not with Janey's smile and those brown eyes seemingly everywhere she turned. She needed a chance to think objectively without her heart hammering in her chest. As long as she was here with Janey it seemed her mind would keep steering her away from thoughts of leaving.

"Ok! I uh…I guess I'll see you later then. If you come back and I'm not here then just come see me at my store, alright?"

Athena nodded. "Understood".

"Great. Good luck out there, yeah?" For a moment it looked as if Janey was contemplating a hug but quickly dropped the idea. Athena was grateful. While the idea of being embraced by the taller woman was…not unpleasant, she imagined such a thing would demolish her already somewhat fragile resolve to walk away. Instead Janey gave the gladiator one more smile before heading back into the kitchen to clean up.

Athena had to force her feet to turn and take her towards the front door but eventually they obeyed. She began to gather up the pile of weapons she had left there, attaching Aspis to the magnetic socket on her gauntlet and sheathing Xiphos but, as she was making sure the sword was attached to her waist correctly she noticed something across the room. It took her mind a couple of seconds to process what it was but, when it did, she immediately felt a profound chill run down her spine. It couldn't be. She immediately stopped what she was doing to walk over and grab the impossible red object pulling it out of the pile of scrap metal it was half-buried in and turning it over in her hands.

A Crimson Lance assassin helmet. Standard issue. Almost identical to the one she had once worn herself, albeit heavily damaged. Initially she felt shaken to see it here of all places but she supposed it made sense. With the Atlas Corporation's prior interest in Pandora it was reasonable to assume they might poke around on Elpis too at some point.

She stared solemnly into the cracked, red eye-lenses of the helmet. Who had this been? How had they lost their helmet? Perhaps killed by scavs or one of the various other threats on Elpis? Certainly not one of her squad if that was the case. None of her girls would have been careless enough to let anything on this moon get the better of them.

"Her girls". Quite the nostalgic term for the people she had turned on.

She clutched the helmet tighter as she felt herself being pulled into a memory. That familiar scene from her nightmares. Fire and destruction surrounded her as her fellow assassins slaughtered the screaming Pandoran villagers without mercy. That day Athena had held her own helmet in her hands similarly to how she was holding this one now and on the ground at her feet? The body of her sister, Jess.

She and Athena had been very young when Atlas came for them and the gladiator's memories of her life before that day had been crumpled and warped after the "integration" Atlas had put her through but Athena knew the girl's face from many nights spent lying awake staring at the files she had stolen from the Atlas database. The girl she could only vaguely remember who had apparently escaped the corporation's clutches. Athena had promised herself she would find her sister and they would escape together. Unfortunately her superiors had discovered her plan before she had managed to find Jess and orchestrated her sister's death to try and prevent Athena from leaving the Crimson Lance.

Having located the village Jess had been living in they had sent their assassins, Athena included, to destroy it as they had many other bandit settlements since they arrived on Pandora. They had specifically ordered only thermal vision was to be used so, during the chaos of the attack, Jess had just looked like a panicked, orange, person-shaped target like every other villager. In retrospect Athena should have known something was wrong but she had gotten used to eccentric demands from the higher-ups over her career. The only way she had known what she had done was when she had shoved a sword into one of those orange targets and it had screamed just like the sound she kept hearing in the fractured, unclear nightmares of her abduction. She had thrown down her swords and removed her helmet to see Jess, lying on her back with a stab wound through her chest. The thing that haunted Athena the most was when the dying woman had seen her face she had…smiled.

Had she actually recognised Athena or was it simply the madness of a dying mind? The gladiator had spent many a night tormenting herself with that question since the incident.

Either way, Jess had died with that smile on her face before Athena had been able to say anything and an overpowering sorrow began to consume her. A bloodied scarf in her sister's hand had caught her attention. Something about it seemed distantly familiar as if she had seen it before long ago and she had slowly leaned down with a shaking hand to pick it up. The scarf she wore to this day. The only piece of her sister she had left.

Then the rage came. She gripped the scarf tighter and tighter, gritting her teeth as every bit of her suppressed anger at Atlas for what they had done to her and her family finally boiled over until she had felt one of her fellow assassin's hands on her shoulder. She hadn't even thought. The helmet dropped from her hand as she whirled around and smashed her fist into the face of the assassin who had touched her with an unbridled cry of fury.

Except all of this had already happened. That assassin was long gone.

The sound of Janey crashing to the ground shattered the memory around Athena and roughly pulled her back into reality. It took the gladiator a second to realise what had happened as she blinked the haze away.

"Janey…?"

No.

No no no no no.

Horror gripped every inch of her. She stepped back and looked down with panic to the trembling hand she had lashed out with. The hand she had used to attack two people she cared about now. She looked back to Janey and, for one terrifying moment, the blonde woman's fallen form looked very similar to that of Jess on that night.

"Janey, I…I didn't…"

Janey managed to turn over and looked up at her from the floor holding her bruised cheek. The dazed woman's expression was one of confusion and disbelief that tore straight into Athena's heart. The blonde's eyes asked her why and the gladiator only had one answer.

"I'm sorry…"

She ran. Athena had never fled from anything in her long and violent career but the thought of Janey sharing the same fate as her sister ripped her apart inside. If she truly was just a weapon, a tool for harming people and nothing more, then she couldn't risk staying here with Janey any longer. She was a fool to think Atlas hadn't broken her and every soldier knew a faulty weapon was nothing but a danger to everything around it.

She had already been responsible for her sister's death. The thought of ever being responsible for Janey's was too much for her to bear.

Athena left her pile of guns behind and sprinted for the apartment's front door throwing it open and running out into the hallway. For a moment she thought she could hear Janey calling after her but she was already in the elevator and hammering the button labelled "SURFACE" with the bottom of her fist before any of it really registered in her distraught mind. Once the elevator had sprung to life and began moving she stumbled back against one of the walls and slowly slid down it, her armour scraping against the metal, until she was sitting on the floor in a dejected heap. She let her head fall back against the wall and stared forlornly up at the ceiling.

"Time to go..." the despondent gladiator murmured quietly to the empty elevator at it climbed higher towards the Concordia streets.


	5. Blood Rush

"Athena is a treacherous snake."

Those were among the final words of General Alphonso Knoxx, the man who had been Athena's commanding officer on Pandora before she turned on the Crimson Lance.

He had never been what Athena would describe as a chatty man, mostly communicating in an assortment of apathetic grunts and snarls, but he had become uncharacteristically vocal in the hours leading up to his death. Athena hadn't paid him any mind at the time thinking those words nothing more than the bitter ramblings of an angry old fool who had been outplayed, but right now she couldn't shake them from her mind. The accusation seemed to loop in her head as if the spirit of Knoxx itself had returned to kick her while she was down. Perhaps the lumbering halfwit had been onto something.

Shortly after fleeing Janey's home and taking the elevator up from Concordia's lower levels Athena had left the city entirely and walked out into the lunar wastes in a panicked, self-loathing haze but she hadn't gotten far before a roaming group of scavs had attacked her. Having left all of her guns and grenades beside Janey's doormat she had faced more of a struggle than she normally would have with only her sword and shield to fight with but, after ten minutes or so of far fancier bladework than usual, she prevailed. Once she had dealt with the last of her assailants she had spotted a small, thankfully abandoned, oxygenated building nearby and decided to take a minute to catch her breath and refill her Oz Kit.

Despite the difficulty of participating in a gunfight entirely without ranged weapons she couldn't deny that she had needed it. Why else would she have aimlessly wandered out onto the Triton Flats the way she did? She was looking for a fight. Something, anything, that might distract her from the pain in her chest. Of course, Athena knew very well the real reason she couldn't stay in Concordia any longer. It was tall and blonde and kind and beautiful. Something that, in a just universe would be kept far away from someone like her.

Athena had never considered herself a coward before but she couldn't face Janey after what happened. She was too ashamed to even think about looking her in the eye. This woman who had invited Athena into her home, done all she could to make the gladiator feel comfortable and shown her a kindness she had never known.

A kindness Athena had repaid by attacking Janey in her own front room.

The despairing gladiator winced at the memory and the metal in the arms of the chair she was sitting in quietly creaked as her fingers gripped them tighter. It felt as if the night's events had planted a kind of jagged blade in her heart. One that twisted in the wound whenever Janey's image flashed through her mind, looking up at her with frightened brown eyes after Athena's attack had thrown her to the ground. The blonde had only been a part of her life for a short time and whatever strange, new emotions their meeting had awakened in Athena scared and unsettled the gladiator but that one night she had spent with Janey meant more to Athena than the junk-dealer would ever know.

A blinking red alert on the ECHO device in her left gauntlet suddenly caught her eye in the room's stillness. How long had that been there? She raised the gauntlet's display to her face for a closer look. Seven missed calls. Must have happened during the battle outside. Athena didn't even need to look to know who they were from. She was about to let her arm and the ECHO device drop to the chair's arm again when her eyes were drawn to another alert she hadn't seen for a while. A small, triangular yellow symbol that indicated a new recording had been made. Athena couldn't even remember the last time she had recorded anything on her ECHO device so it couldn't have been her doing. Out of curiosity she pressed her gloved finger to the video file on the holographic display and her breath caught in her throat as Janey's face appeared on the screen.

"Heeey Athena! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, huh? Sorry, I gotta whisper because there's a really tired vault hunter lady passed out on my sofa in the next room. I think the poor thing might have overdone it a bit."

Athena ordered herself to turn it off. There was no possible scenario in which continuing to watch the recording would end well for her. She knew that and yet she couldn't bring herself to stop it. It had only been a few hours since she had been sitting at the blonde's kitchen table eating breakfast with her but that smile she had found herself becoming so fond of already felt so distant. If she was truly never going to see Janey Springs again she couldn't throw away the chance to see it once more. Just for a little while.

"Anyway!" the grinning image of Janey continued, somehow managing to be quiet **and** loud at the same time. "I tinkered with your ECHO device a bit like I said I would. You should be able to catch all of the terrible, **amazing** ECHOnet shows in the galaxy now, whether they're about exploding toilet motorcycles or jetpack racing or things being thrown off a roof in slow motion it'll have you covered. Just a little something from me to keep you company when you're out there on your own y'know? I uh…I guess if you're watching this you're probably back on Pandora by now and I'm sure I already gushed enough when you left but…it was really nice meeting you, Athena. If you ever find yourself around these parts again for whatever reason come see me, okay? We'll grab another drink if you like."

The blonde paused and, for the briefest of moments, her cheerful demeanor seemed to waver. The lapse was hidden as quickly as it appeared and within a couple of seconds the brown-eyed junk dealer was smiling again but even Athena with her negligible social skills could see how forced it was.

"I know a vault hunter's life is probably busy all over." Janey continued. "I get that. It'd be great to get to know you a little better if you ever have the time but…let's just say I'll see you if I see you. Take care of yourself, yeah? And remember that, for you, my door is always open."

The blonde released a small sigh before peering around her kitchen.

"Okay, now I'm going to look into cooking up Miss Sleepyhead in there some breakfast. Let me see what I even have here…"

The recording ended there leaving Janey's image frozen on Athena's ECHO device. The increasingly forlorn gladiator continued to stare at the screen until she couldn't bear to any longer. She turned off the device and buried her head in her hands running her fingers into her black hair and releasing a ragged, shaky breath she didn't even realise she had been holding.

This is **your fault**. You knew going home with her was a bad idea but you refused to see reason. What did you think was going to happen?

Her fingers curled into fists against her head grasping handfuls of her hair as she clenched her eyes shut. That damned voice in her head again. The one it belonged to was lightyears away from Elpis. Possibly even dead by now for all Athena knew but, whatever their fate, some small piece of them continued to live on in the mind of every woman who donned an Atlas assassin uniform.

Whenever the Atlas corporation became convinced a little girl might make a good assassin they would send a group of soldiers to retrieve her and after pulling that girl from the arms of her parents they would hand her a loaded gun and an ultimatum. Use the gun to kill their remaining family or all of them would die. Athena's abduction had apparently been no different. The worst part was she didn't even remember doing it. Her memories of that night and every night before had been all but destroyed by the years of brutal assassin conditioning that had followed but when she had found her file while snooping around in the Atlas database one night the report on her acquisition had left no room for doubt. Whether Athena could remember it or not, her parents were dead by her hand. A "routine acquisition" they called it.

"Asset secured without incident".

Every girl Atlas abducted went through that same "conditioning". A sugar-coated term for what was essentially several traumatizing years of abuse and torture specifically designed not only to remove every last trace of useless humanity from the assassins but also to imprint them with those ever-important Atlas values. Strength, discipline, ruthlessness and above all? Unquestioning obedience. All of the girls who managed to live through those years found their every step haunted by the voice of the officer who had overseen and directed their suffering. An intentional side-effect of the process of course. Turning the assassins own minds against them was the most reliable way the corporation had found to ensure their loyalty while there was nobody around to keep them in line.

Her entire life that obnoxious voice had been lurking in the back of her mind, painfully planted there by her captors, loudly berating her and criticizing every choice she made that went against what they had spent so many years trying to burn into her. Sometimes it was difficult for Athena to even tell which thoughts were her own and which Atlas had authored for her.

She remembered watching over the years as her fellow abductees succumbed. Brainwashed into becoming the good little soldiers the corporation required. She supposed it was just easier to give in and try to believe killing for Atlas was the glorious and rewarding career they made it out to be rather than accept that everything they had been through had been for nothing. Eventually a young girl growing up under Atlas's roof learned the only way to survive was to comply and for the longest time Athena believed herself to be no different. Once her assassin training was complete and she was recruited into the Crimson Lance she spent years doing exactly as she was told. Following orders to the letter and eliminating whatever targets she was pointed at but over her career it gradually became more and more obvious the conditioning hadn't worked on Athena quite as well as Atlas had hoped. She still had something slightly resembling a conscience, a distaste for killing the innocent and a desire for freedom that only grew stronger the longer Atlas held her leash. All unacceptable traits for an assassin of the Crimson Lance.

When she finally began to resist her superiors they were aggravated and concerned by the displays of defiance in what was supposed to be one of their most loyal soldiers but Athena was their most skilled agent. Her work had allowed Atlas to grow more powerful across the galaxy and they couldn't afford to simply make her disappear like they had some of their other troublesome operatives. The fact that they considered her too valuable an asset to lose was the reason why her older sister's bones lay in the Pandoran dirt like so many others.

No. Unknowingly or not, she was the one who had driven the blade through Jess's heart and watched her slip away. That blood was on her hands as was that of her mother and father. Anyone close to Athena tended not to see the happy ending they deserved.

Athena knew the whole point of the assassin conditioning had essentially been to irreparably ruin the girls Atlas captured. To transform them from people into living weapons, unable to lead any other kind of life beyond that which had been forced on them. It had always been a comfort to Athena in her darkest hours to hold on to some small hope that she could escape that fate but she couldn't deny the evidence to the contrary. Every attempt she made to do so seemed doomed to fail. First the twenty years she had spent searching the galaxy for her sister. The plans she had made to take Jess and run to some far away corner of the galaxy where Atlas couldn't find them, only for her to be snatched away and then there was Janey and the offer she had made Athena of a place in her home on Elpis. The offer the gladiator had found herself becoming so tempted by.

Athena remembered the sensation of the tall junk-dealer's lips against her cheek. The tender electricity that had spread through every inch of her body at their touch. How simultaneously terrified and ecstatic she had felt. When those lips had lifted away from her face the gladiator had looked up at the blonde woman and seen something in those brown eyes that had made her heart swell in her chest. Nobody had ever looked at Athena that way before.

Suddenly the room's silence was broken by the sound of an alarm on her ECHO device. For a moment Athena believed it to be another call and was about to just let it pass like the rest but when she glanced down at the display she saw that it was actually a distress signal. She had forgotten when she worked for Atlas she had set up her device to inform her of calls for help within her immediate area just in case she was ever available to lend a hand. This one was close. Most likely some travellers pinned down by a scav party like the one that had attacked her. If she left immediately she might be able to help someone. Perhaps she might even luck out and that someone would be both grateful and wealthy. Slim chance around here but she rose from her chair nonetheless. She had been idle long enough.

However far you run, however many Atlas personnel you cut down it won't make any difference. You are and always will be an assassin of the Crimson Lance. A **soldier**. Your place is on the battlefield.

Athena pressed a few buttons on her ECHO device and Janey's post-farewell video began playing again.

"Heeey Athena! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, huh? Sorry, I gotta whisper because there's some really tired vault hunter lady passed out on-"

She hit the pause button and the video froze again. The gladiator's gloved finger moved slowly across the keyboard until it hovered just above the delete key. Her eyes lingered on the image of Janey for a moment longer until quickly, like tearing off a bandage, she closed her eyes and pressed the button erasing the file from her ECHO device.

Whatever ridiculous feelings you think you have for that civilian are nothing more than a childish fantasy. She would only slow you down and dull your blade. Now get out there and do what you have always done. What you were made to do.

The gladiator shut off the display of her ECHO device before pulling up her hood and stepping forward. Her Oz kit hissed into life a she moved through the building's oxygen barrier and out onto the lunar wastes to find her next distraction.

* * *

"Ow…"

Janey grimaced as she tentatively touched her fingers to her bruised cheek.

"Oi, stick this on there" said Pickle as he walked into Janey's front room from the kitchen tossing an icepack in her direction.

"Thanks..." Janey said as she caught the pack and gingerly pressed it to the throbbing mark on her face.

Pickle hopped into one of the nearby chairs and peered at her quizzically. The young scavenger had appeared at Janey's door shortly after Athena had disappeared for one his semi-regular visits only to find her sitting on the floor nursing the fist-sized bruise on her cheek.

"So…what?" Pickle asked. "She just lost it all of a sudden and walloped you? After you invited her in for the night? What's that all about? You sure know how to-"

"-to pick em'. I know." Janey interrupted. She had made that particular comment to herself a few too many times to start hearing it from Pickle too.

"So why'd she do it?" The black-haired boy continued. "She didn't really strike me as the kind of peanut butter nutter to just randomly whack someone for doing her a favour."

Janey remained silent.

Pickle sighed and leaned forward in his chair, the little scavenger's expression changing to one of rare seriousness. "Look Janey, I know I'm not your brother or anything and I know you're right keen on this girl but if she's really the type to smack you around whenever she gets all pissed off…"

"I don't reckon she is." Janey immediately replied. She noticed a look of vaguely frustrated scepticism cross Pickle's face. She couldn't blame him. He was her friend and he didn't want to see her hurt because her feelings for Athena were blinding her to the truth.

She hadn't known the wandering gladiator for very long but she knew, in this case, the truth was more complicated than it appeared.

"You should have seen her face, Pickle." Janey said lowering the icepack from her cheek. "I've never seen anyone look so scared before."

She had. Once. Specifically that night several months ago out in Serenity's Waste when a large and incredibly angry kraggon had broken into the secluded campsite she had shared with her previous girlfriend, Stephanie. The second she spotted the beast Janey had gone straight for her shotgun but Steph, delicate flower that she was, never carried a gun or any kind of weapon despite Janey's constant pleading that she do so. A strictly principled girl that one.

She never had a chance.

Within those few seconds it took Janey to reach her weapon the screaming had already started and then almost immediately fallen silent behind her. When she grabbed her shotgun and whirled around only to see the girl she had been cuddling with just a minute ago torn apart by what was basically a dragon an enraged and terrified Janey had pulled the trigger without thinking about her proximity to the monster. The resulting explosive spray of lava blood from the beast's demise is what had given Janey the extensive burn scars down most of her left side. Between the kraggon's vicious attack and the unrecognisable puddle of lava it had become after Janey killed it there wasn't even enough left of Stephanie for Janey to bury. She was just…gone.

Janey may have survived the ordeal but it marked her beyond the scars on her body. If she ever lingered for too long on the horrific memory she would often find herself being pulled into it. The sound of Steph calling out to her, the panic as she scrambled for her weapon, the searing pain as the kraggon's molten blood splashed across her skin and the guilt that she hadn't been fast enough once it was over all as very real as they had been that night. Sometimes the memory consumed her so completely it took her a minute or two to remember just where and when she was after she snapped out of it. Janey was well aware what it felt like to have something like that hanging over you always threatening to drag you into the past if you allowed your mind to wander for too long and she imagined Athena had experienced more than her fair share of personal tragedies. The gladiator's eyes were proof enough of that.

Janey looked across the room to the broken assassin helmet still on the floor where Athena had dropped it. All kinds of things could stir up those memories but in this case Janey should have known that helmet would mean nothing pleasant for her guest given her history. She had honestly completely forgotten it was even there until she walked into her front room and saw the gladiator holding it. Just another piece of random junk she had scooped up because it looked fancy and she thought she might be able to get a few bucks for it. What kind of nightmare had that thing pulled Athena into?

"I don't know where she was when she did it but it wasn't here…y'know?" Janey said looking back to Pickle again seeking some kind of acknowledgement but the boy's expression made no effort to hide how utterly confused he was by the idea. Nonetheless he smiled and shook his head with a chuckle.

"No, I really don't." he replied. "I think you're bacon butty nutty but if you're willing to stick up for her then I suppose that's good enough for me. Let's go."

Pickle jumped down off the chair he was sitting on and placed his hands on his hips. It was the kind of posture Janey had learned meant she was about to have very little choice about something.

"Go where?" she asked arching an eyebrow.

"To find this ladyfriend of yours!" Pickle replied grinning widely. "She can't have gotten far. Then you two can have a top hat chat and sort this whole thing out!"

Janey looked down at the icepack in her hands again. She had been far too dazed to chase after Athena before but once she managed to pull herself together she had made several attempts to contact the gladiator with no luck. Janey could understand why Athena might be trying to avoid her after what happened but she was out there alone, drastically underequipped and probably in no emotional state to be fighting. She couldn't just sit and wait when the gladiator needed her help. She didn't believe for a second Athena had meant to harm her and if she had then she would at least hear it from her in person. Janey refused to let that horrified expression be the last she saw on the gladiator's face.

She stood up and dropped the icepack onto the table.

"Right." she said looking back to Pickle. "Let's go".

Pickle grinned and followed Janey as she moved towards the door. "Bit of a warning though" the boy added. "When we get the buggy I'm going on the gun and if she tries to belt you one again I'm firing a cryo missile straight into her garden hose nose."

* * *

The sight of a recently destroyed town was something Athena had become very accustomed to over her career with the Crimson Lance. It was impossible to spend that many years as an assassin and not end up at least somewhat jaded towards death and destruction after all. Athena often felt like she had seen it all but Elpis seemed consistently determined to prove her wrong.

A ruined settlement with minimal gravity and atmosphere was a uniquely unsettling thing to behold. The corpses didn't seem to properly rest where they fell as if they might spring to life again at any moment and the fires that usually raged throughout the destroyed buildings were absent despite the numerous burn marks but it was the complete and total silence that bothered Athena the most.

The gladiator had tracked the distress signal to a scav outpost to the northeast but it appeared as if whatever had caused the need for it had quickly and violently distressed everyone to death and left before she arrived. Scavs fighting amongst themselves seemed like a fairly common occurrence on Elpis but the destruction seemed far too precise for that. One thing Athena had learned on Pandora was that when two bands of psychopaths each decided the other should die nothing around them was left standing when they were done.

She approached a nearby body, face down in the dust, and pushed it over onto its back with the armoured tip of her boot. Whoever it was had several deep holes burned into their chest. Likely the work of an incendiary laser. The thoroughly dead scav was clutching an ECHO device with a rapidly blinking green light on it indicating an active distress signal. Sighing with irritation she knelt down to switch it off so nobody else wasted their time with this and was just turning to leave when she noticed something slumped against a wall in the corner of her eye. Something yellow. Specifically Hyperion yellow. As she cautiously stepped closer to get a better look she saw that it was a loader bot or the remains of one at least. Evidently thrown against the wall by a corrosive rocket, the contents of which was still eating away at the gaping hole in its shoulder.

What was it doing here? Jack had taken Hyperion and left to chase his new prize on Pandora. He was completely uninterested in what became of Elpis now. Perhaps a stray that got left behind when Helios departed? Athena heavily doubted one loader bot could single-handedly slaughter what appeared to be around twenty or so scavs by itself.

The increasingly wary gladiator gripped the sword at her waist tighter, an overpowering feeling of dread creeping up her spine. Something was very wrong and not in the usual surrounded by corpses kind of way. Her intuition was screaming at her to back away. That nothing good could possibly come from remaining here any longer.

It was a feeling Athena gotten used to over the years. She had always displayed a remarkable talent for recognising danger before it actually happened to the point where several of her old Atlas instructors had become convinced she possessed some kind of supernatural precognitive abilities. The truth was far less interesting. Athena was no siren but her surroundings spoke to her in a way they didn't to others. It was undoubtedly a useful skill for someone in her profession to have and one she had learned to place her trust in over the years. Disregarding it always seemed to end badly for her. The most recent example being her failure to immediately jump in an escape pod and fire herself back to Pandora the second she met Handsome Jack in person on Helios.

Heeding the blaring alarms in her head she quickly decided to abandon any further attempts at investigation and turned towards the camp's entrance to leave when, as if on cue, a second loader bot suddenly appeared in a doorway to her left. Upon seeing her it immediately raised its laser and fired. Normally the shot would have been a fatal hit to the neck but if growing up the way she had made a person anything it was fast. Athena's shield was up and ready before the weapon discharged and easily absorbed the shot as well as the second and third shots that followed. The moment the slightest pause in the robot's barrage occurred Athena swung her shield arm back and hurled Aspis at her attacker striking the loader in the chest and throwing it back into the building it had attempted to step out of with a loud clang.

The shield had barely returned to the magnetic socket on her gauntlet before the whole area seemed to come alive with loaders appearing from other doors, around corners and even from the outpost's entrance cutting off her escape. Every one of them seemed to be disfigured in some way. Many had large holes in their bodies while others were missing a limb or two. Not a single one of them looked to be in any condition for battle but some were even reduced to dragging themselves across the floor towards her, their legs either not functional enough to bear their weight or missing completely.

None of the barely-functional machines shambling in her direction were particularly daunting opponents but there were enough of them that it hardly mattered. Scavs were one thing but fighting so many loaders, even when they were in such disrepair, without her guns or grenades was a bad idea. She rapidly scanned the area looking for a gun, anything that might give her just a little more ranged capability, when she spotted an old, rusted Jakob's revolver lying beside another unfortunate scav corpse just a few feet to her right. With no time to look for anything better she scooped it up and ran through one of the few nearby doors loaders weren't coming out of. Thankfully the building she retreated into wasn't just a dead end and she sprinted down a corridor to her left. The walls and ceiling were mostly glass so it didn't offer much in the way of cover from the small army of homicidal robots outside but if she could just find an exit from the scav base that led out close to a Moon Zoomy machine she could outrun them.

She rounded a corner at speed, her metal boots skidding loudly on the floor panels before she caught sight of another loader appearing from a doorway about twenty feet ahead of her. Without slowing her pace Athena raised her newly scavenged firearm and took aim. It was only when she pulled the trigger that it suddenly occurred to her that, in her haste, she hadn't even checked the gun's chamber to see if it actually had any bullets in it or not. After only two shots bouncing off the robot's armour she was made well aware. They may not have been enough to actually damage the loader but they did at least manage to stun it long enough for her to close the gap. Before it could fire its weapon she had already tossed the empty revolver aside, pulled Xiphos from its sheath and used it to take the robot's weapon arm off at the elbow. She followed by sweeping the crimson energy sword round and under the robot, severing one of its legs and knocking it off its feet before delivering a final blow down into the middle of its torso, slicing it in half before it hit the ground. As her opponent's various pieces clattered to the floor Athena noticed a second loader bot emerging from a doorway a few feet further down the corridor and she dashed to reach it before it had a chance to take a shot at her.

When she approached the loader it attempted to fend her off by swinging an armoured fist at her but the gladiator ducked to avoid the clumsy attack and retaliated by thrusting Xiphos forward into the robot's single chest-mounted eye with enough force that it pierced through the loader's body. Athena gripped Xiphos's handle with both hands and grit her teeth as she lifted the impaled robot off the ground and above her head before slashing downward and splitting her opponent from head to groin in a shower of sparks. The two halves of the bisected robot fell to the floor on either side of her and she quickly resumed her sprint down the corridor. If this structure's layout made any sense at all she surmised the next right should lead her out onto the flats again and from there it was only a short distance to the closest Moon Zoomy station. She swung around the corner only to immediately freeze in her tracks at the sight before her, the sheer number of loader bots on her tail suddenly making a lot more sense.

A constructor bot slowly floated into view from behind a nearby cliff. Athena instantly recognised it as the same one she and her team had helped build and then forced an unwilling AI to inhabit on Jack's orders during their mission on Elpis. The terrified AI had rebelled and used its new body to try and kill them meaning they had no choice but to subdue it until the Hyperion scientist Gladstone could erase its personality and make it obedient enough for Jack's purposes. It wasn't something Athena was proud of but it was either that or allow Elpis and everyone living on it to be destroyed. They needed an army to retake the captured Helios station and the prototype constructor bot was the only way to get one in time. While regrettable, the choice had been clear. Did Jack just leave it behind? Of course he did. He had Gladstone's blueprints and the near-infinite resources of Hyperion at his disposal now. He had no need for a broken down prototype anymore.

The floating yellow machine focused its attention on her and spoke in a unsettling, broken voice that seemed to be half that of your typical Hyperion robot and half that of a scared young woman. One Athena had not expected to hear again.

" **TARGET AQUIRE** -what- **TARGET AQUIRED**. **WEAPONS LOCKED. PREPARING TO** -what have you done to me…?"

"Felicity?" Athena replied. It couldn't be. Gladstone claimed to have completely written over every last trace of the Dahl AI's former personality but it seemed some small fragment of her still remained. The constructor twitched at the mention of its former name, the machine's movement becoming unstable and erratic.

" **PREPARING TO** -m-means happ- **PREPAR** -happiness- **ING TO FIRE**. Hate- **PREPARATION** -if hate is what you want… **PREPARATION COMPLETE** …hate is what you'll get!"

" **FIRING**."

Athena barely had time to raise Aspis before the first missile struck her. The shield absorbed the damage but the force of the impact threw her back against the window behind her spreading a large crack across the glass. A second missile shoved her through the window entirely sending shards of reinforced glass flying out around her in a wide spray as the building's atmosphere vented. The lack of gravity outside caused the gladiator to tumble and skid across the dusty Elpis surface before she dug a hand into the ground and managed to slide to a halt. A sharp pain spread up the right side of her torso as she attempted to stand but she didn't have time to rest with the loader horde closing in and Felicity in pursuit. Dragging herself to her feet she dashed in the only direction she was mostly certain wouldn't lead to an immediate death by mass laserfire. She needed to take down the constructor if she was going to have any chance of surviving but it was too high and her current arsenal was drastically lacking in reach. She wracked her brain for ways she could possibly cause any meaningful damage to the flying machine when another partially incinerated scav corpse a few feet ahead of her gave her the answer.

A corrosive rocket launcher. Perfect. Athena knew the weapon that disabled the loader she had seen before had to still be around somewhere. She ducked down and grabbed it in both hands as she ran past, the large weapon's weight a great reassurance in her underequipped state.

It didn't take long for her pursuer to appear over the roof of one of the settlements buildings, limping across the darkened Elpis sky as if barely able to stay airborne. The sound of Felicity's fractured, enraged voice loud enough to make out even through the almost non-existant atmosphere. It was a small consolation but at the very least Athena supposed she didn't have to deal with a stealthy enemy. Not that a constructor ever needed to be.

" **HULL INTEGRITY AT 22%**. **SYSTEMS FUNCTIONALITY AT 17%**. **IMMEDIATE REPAIRS AND REFORMATTING ADVIS** -yy-you cast me aside. **TARGET LOST**. **ATTEMPTING TO RELOCATE**. **SCANNING FOR TAR** -all to ss-save the murderers and thieves that call this place home."

Athena didn't even need to look back to know when Felicity spotted her. The moment the constructor's single red eye focused on her she could almost feel its furious gaze burning into her back.

"Was it worth it, Athena? **TARGET LOCKED**. **RESUMING ATTACK**."

The floating machine unleashed a barrage of freshly digistructed missiles in the gladiator's direction. Athena couldn't raise Aspis to block them while handling the rocket launcher but she didn't dare drop what was likely her only chance at getting out of this. Instead she attempted to dive clear of the impact area but the explosion proved too large roaring up behind her and flinging her into the building to her right. She crashed against the wall, her armoured form leaving a large dent, and fell to the ground somehow managing to hold on to the launcher the whole time but the second her feet touched the floor she grunted in pain and fell to her knee clutching at her side. Athena knew the feeling of a cracked rib or two by now. It felt as if every part of her body fervently protested her decision to stand up and keep moving rather than lie down and die quietly.

She pulled open the chamber on the rocket launcher to check if it was even loaded this time. A single rocket remained. Better than nothing. She attempted to hoist the weapon up into a firing position but quickly discovered Felicity's last attack had damaged something in her shoulder as well. She hissed in pain and almost dropped the rocket launcher but instead grit her teeth and managed to recover bracing the weapon on her injured shoulder just as the constructor floated overhead, apparently searching for where she had gone after the explosion. Athena had done a great many terrible things in her life. Things that kept her awake at night. Things that she knew would and should haunt her for the rest of her life but if she gave herself to the mercy of every challenger who came looking for revenge she would have died a long time ago. The galaxy was not a fair place. Felicity's hatred for her was justified after what she had done to her and perhaps she deserved her vengeance but if the AI wanted her dead she would have to take a number and try her luck like everyone else. Such was the way of things.

Rising to her feet again she caught sight of the dilapidated loader mob approaching around the side of a building to her right. Pieces fell from their bodies as they moved as if in a state of decomposition. It wasn't even that they had suffered damage. From what Athena could tell it seemed they had simply been created that way. Perhaps Felicity was even more badly damaged that it appeared, to the point where her digistructing capabilities were becoming more limited. Or maybe in some dismal way the loaders reflected the AI's emotional state. Either way, with every one of them heading in her direction and Felicity preparing another attack she didn't have any time left to deliberate.

Now or never.

She charged forward and leapt into the air using her Oz kit to propel her onto the roof of the building nearest to where the constructor was hanging in the air. The sound of her boots landing against the building's roof alerted the constructor to her location but before it could turn to face her Athena had already aimed and pulled the trigger. Thankfully the poorly-maintained weapon actually fired instead of exploding in her hands and the corrosive rocket struck the flying robot in the side severely denting the constructor's armour as well as spreading its green, acidic contents across its body.

It wasn't enough. Athena had hoped she would get lucky and the shot would destroy the already badly damaged constructor or at least disable it until she had a chance to get clear but it seemed all it had done was stagger the flying robot and buy her a few seconds at most. She had nothing left. No more guns. No teammates to cover her. Only one more really bad idea between her and the grave she had spent her entire life just barely outrunning. She pulled Xiphos out of its sheath and threw the energy sword at the flying robot like a javelin. Considering the distance between the gladiator and her target, in any other situation the sword would have clattered uselessly to the ground but the Elpis gravity allowed it to fly true. The blade pierced the robot's hull in the same wide dent the rocket had made but only managed to sink a couple of inches into the constructor's thick armour leaving it sticking out of the robot's side at an upward angle.

Without wasting another moment Athena cranked up the output on her oz kit far beyond the recommended levels. Rather than the steady stream of oxygen that kept her breathing or the occasional gentle gust that allowed her to glide in low gravity, she released a powerful blast that lifted her off the floor and flung her into the sky. Several smaller bursts were used mid-flight to correct her course until she reached the point she needed and one final release in the direction she was moving abruptly brought her to a stop. For a brief moment she simply hung in the air as if the moon's meager gravity had to remind itself to start pulling her back down again. Once she began to feel herself descend she drew back her shield arm and, with a cry of fury, hurled Aspis with every bit of strength she had left. The shield scythed down through the air towards her attacker, its characteristic energy trail leaving a bright crimson arc across the sky.

Just as Felicity was shaking off the corrosive rocket's effects the shield collided with the base of the sword's hilt with enough force to shove Xiphos into the robot's shell and then through the constructor's body entirely, erupting from the other side in a fiery explosion and hurling the machine sideways into a nearby cliffside. The panicking machine unleashed a deluge of rockets and lasers in every direction, frantically struggling to stay airborne as its body fell apart.

The gladiator slowly descended to the moon's surface somehow managing to avoid being hit by the hail of explosives as they rained down around her. She landed beside another of the settlements buildings and forced herself to run despite the rapidly worsening pain in her side. Athena knew any one of the missiles bombarding the area could mean the end of her but if she could just make it to the other side of the building she could gain at least some measure of cover from the blind constructor's destructive death throes. She could only hope Felicity's loader horde was under the same pressure. Her attack didn't seem particularly discriminatory after all.

When, after what felt like the longest sprint of her life, she reached the corner of the building she rounded it at speed but had to pull off an emergency stop when she almost collided with a loader attempting to do the same from the other side. Apparently a straggler separated from the rest of the horde but this one didn't attempt to attack or waylay her in any way. In fact it didn't appear to be armed at all. It only took Athena a moment to recall her first fight against Felicity and remember what that meant but by then it was too late. The motion to raise her shield arm to protect herself was instinctive but wherever Aspis had gone after her last attack it hadn't returned to her gauntlet yet leaving her defenseless when the EXP Loader detonated. The almost point-blank explosion threw Athena back through the air before crashing to the ground and skidding several feet across the lunar surface until she eventually came to a stop on her back.

With a great deal of effort Athena rolled over onto her front and pushed down against the ground beneath her, barely managing to stay conscious as she shakily tried to haul her battered body to its feet again. Finally she heard the flailing constructor crash to the ground somewhere behind her and its frenzied torrent of missile and laser fire came to an end but when she went to take a breath for a well-deserved sigh of relief she found herself unable to. She had been careful not to expend every bit of oxygen she had to finish the fight with Felicity so she would have enough remaining to escape once it was over but it seemed her Oz kit had taken damage at some point. She needed to find an oxygen source somewhere and quickly but when she attempted to stand she cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground again. The EXP Loader's attack must have broken her leg. Attempting to see through the cloud of dust that still lingered in the air after her fall Athena could see that, while Felicity was down, the small army of loaders she had spawned was still closing in on her position. She had to move. To endure was all she knew. To survive so that she could survive again another day. That had always been her life whether she fought for Atlas or not but even if she had air to breathe this was a situation she couldn't see a way out of. Her sword and shield were missing, whatever mobility she had left was gone and she was rapidly suffocating to death with a swarm of killer robots closing in. Survivor or not she had nothing left to work with.

End of the line.

She supposed it was fitting. Athena may have done what she did to save the moon and its inhabitants from destruction but the fact remained that she had paid for Jack's robot army with something that wasn't hers to trade. It was because of her that Felicity had been reduced to a vengeful shadow of her former self. When Athena installed the Dahl AI into the constructor that day despite her protests she had essentially created her own executioner. Complete with mindless robot horde.

Wasn't this the part where the entirety of her gore-soaked life was supposed to flash before her eyes like some kind of gruesome, low-budget slideshow? One final journey through every awful thing she had ever done before the curtains closed? That was what Athena had always heard but, for someone with as many regrets as her, the series of deeds that passed through her mind was surprisingly brief.

Her mother and father. The very first step she had taken on the bloody path she had carved across the galaxy in Atlas' name.

Her elder sister. The kill that haunted her above all others. The day her servitude to the Atlas corporation had come to sudden and violent end.

And then there was Janey Springs. The woman who, for just one night, had pulled her from her life of survival for survival's sake and given her the briefest glimpse of something else. Something she found herself truly wishing she could have been a part of but removing herself from Janey's life was the best thing she could do for the blonde before she inevitably ended up like every other person Athena had ever cared about.

If she was going to die here she could at least do it in the knowledge she managed to do at least that one thing right.

In her last moments of consciousness before everything faded to black she wondered if she had finally lost her mind. Somewhere in the increasingly loud stomping, grinding and scraping of the approaching loader horde she could have sworn she could hear someone calling out her name.


	6. Goddess Of Wisdom

The next thing Athena knew she was alone. Floating in what appeared to be an infinite, featureless black void. Her enemies were gone. Her pain was gone. Even her very serious need to breathe in the near future was gone. The only thing that prevented the situation from graduating to complete sensory deprivation was a faint whirring noise coming from an unknown source. Was she dead? Athena had never believed in any kind of higher power or an afterlife before but she had traveled the galaxy and encountered hundreds of different groups of people who did. Each with their own religion and each believing themselves to be the ones who actually got it right. Apparently the "spend eternity in a dark room with what sounds like a malfunctioning refrigerator" guys hit the jackpot.

Wonderful.

The gladiator was just about to start considering perhaps slowly spiraling down into a lonely madness to pass the time when she noticed that odd whirring sound was slowly getting louder. Within a few seconds it had grown from a low rumble to a deafening roar that seemed to come from every direction at once. Eventually it grew so loud she was forced to clamp her hands over her ears in an attempt to keep her eardrums from exploding. It was at the point where she thought her head might split in two when the void around her erupted into a blinding light and she was dragged back into consciousness.

Athena's eyes slowly began to open only to immediately clench shut again, stung by the abrupt change in brightness. The various sounds of life surrounded her. People conversing, footsteps upon metal floor tiles and…

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the room's lighting but once they had she glanced up at the ceiling directly above her head.

An old, barely functioning air conditioner. The source of the noise that had woken her. Athena felt like she should have recognized it sooner. The gladiator hadn't spent a lot of time there during her mission on Elpis but the air conditioning unit in Nurse Nina's med bay had quite a distinctive, unhealthy sound to it. Almost as if it were in just as much pain as the patients.

It appeared she was back in Concordia. How? The last thing she remembered was her Oz kit running empty after she narrowly managed to defeat the raging Felicity constructor. She recalled gasping for air, unable to reach an oxygen source due to having broken her leg during the battle, Felicity's homicidal horde of loaders closing in on her and then a moon buggy rolling up to her just as she lost consciousness. Someone must have come to her aid. Athena sighed. The idea of being in somebody's debt always made her somewhat uncomfortable but if her rescuer was still around she decided she should at least thank them for saving her life. Attempting to sit up in her bed, however, quickly reminded her of the reason she was here in the first place and she groaned as a dozen or so aches and pains of varying severity reintroduced themselves across her body. She must have been treated by Nina while she was out because they were significantly less agonizing than before. The battered gladiator eventually managed to sit up and began to scan the clinic for someone who looked the type to make a habit of saving the lives of random strangers but, as it turned out, she didn't have to scan for long at all.

Sitting in a chair to her left sound asleep and leaning on her bedside was Janey. Of course it was Janey. Who else on this moon would endanger themselves to try and save her like that?

The slumbering blonde's presence immediately triggered a surge of conflicting emotions within Athena. On the one hand, after having assumed she would never again get the chance to, she was overjoyed simply to see Janey again and, for just a few moments, she was about as close to calm as she had been all night. Then came the panic. She had to leave. She had to get far away from here. From Janey. If she stayed she would only end up hurting her again or worse but a glance down at herself was all it took to inform her that fleeing the city again wouldn't be an option. Her broken right leg was in a cast and there were several patches and bandages across her body. She wasn't fit for an afternoon stroll much less another journey across the Triton Flats.

Her brow furrowed as she looked back to the girl at her bedside and a profound feeling of guilt and regret spread through her. She wasn't ready to face Janey after what had happened but then she doubted she would ever feel ready. Either way, it was physically impossible for Athena to run from her anymore. What other choice did she have? Whatever was going to happen was going to happen now.

Athena steeled herself as much as she could and hesitantly reached out to Janey laying one of her hands on her sleeping savior's arm. The gentle touch caused Janey to stir from her slumber and then slowly wake. The blonde appeared groggy and disoriented for a moment before she looked up and saw the cause of her awakening. Hey eyes widened and she shot to her feet knocking over the small chair she had been sitting on with a loud clatter.

"Athena! You're awake!" she shouted excitedly.

Athena simply nodded. She hadn't even come close to figuring out what she was going to say yet.

"How…how are you feeling?" Janey continued.

"I…am alive." the gladiator eventually managed. "Thanks to you, I assume?"

"Me and Pickle actually. He helped me drag you into the buggy before that ruddy huge bunch of robots got you."

"I see..."

A silence passed between the two women as Athena found her eyes drawn to the dark bruise on the junk dealer's cheek. It tore her apart inside to see her handiwork up close. Slowly, tentatively the gladiator raised a hand to Janey's face giving the blonde a chance to back away or tell her to stop if she wanted to. When Janey didn't recoil or make any attempt to stop her she reached over and laid her palm against the blonde's bruised cheek with a gentleness Athena hadn't even thought herself capable of. She still had no idea what she could possibly say but anything had to be better than nothing at this point.

"Janey. I'm sorry…you…I would never…"

Athena knew it was a pathetic mess of an apology but it was all she had to offer. Scattered, desperate fragments of something she didn't have the time or charisma to finish piecing together yet. She was about to let her hand drop from Janey's face, honestly feeling unworthy to even touch the blonde woman, when Janey reached up and laid her own hand over Athena's holding the gladiator's palm to her cheek.

"It's okay, Athena. I know."

Wait. What?

Of all the things Athena had expected Janey to say to her after what happened that was not one of them. The gladiator stared at her completely dumbfounded for a moment until Nurse Nina suddenly rounded the corner and Athena couldn't have yanked her hand away from Janey's face any faster.

"AH. YOU WAKE UP." The nurse bellowed with heavy accent. "THIS GREAT NEWS. WHEN SPRINGS HERE CARRY YOU IN ALL WHITE-FACE AND BLEEDING NINA WASN'T SURE YOU WOULD. SMALL RED WOMAN LOOK LIKE SHE THREW HERSELF DOWN MANY, ANGRY STAIRS. NINA GLAD TO BE PROVEN WRONG THOUGH. IS GREAT TIMING."

Nina pointed at the bed Athena was laying on.

"MANY INJURED. NINA'S CLINIC RUNNING OUT OF ROOM. SPRINGS SAY YOU WELCOME TO RECOVER AT HER PLACE. NINA SAY IT OFFICIALLY SAFE TO MOVE YOU. NOW PLEASE GO. NINA HAVE CRYBABY WHO SOMEHOW EXPLODE ALL HANDS AND FEET AT SAME TIME ARRIVING ANY MOMENT."

Athena looked from Nina to Janey who flashed her a somewhat timorous smile and shrugged. Apparently a discussion she had missed while unconscious. The idea of returning to Janey's apartment caused her to feel no small amount of unease but it seemed she had little choice in the matter.

"I uh…okay." The gladiator said turning back to Nina. "Do you have…crutches or something I can…"

Nina folded her arms and shook her head.

"SORRY. NO MORE LEFT. NOBODY EVER BRING THEM BACK. NO WHEELCHAIRS EITHER. PEOPLE THINK IT FUNNY TO PUT ROCKETS ON THEM AND RACE THEM OUT ON THE FLATS."

The nurse leveled an accusing glare at Janey who looked away and scratched the back of her neck guiltily. Nina looked back to Athena and pointed a gloved finger at the fidgeting blonde.

"CRUTCH. GOODBYE NOW."

Nina rushed off around a corner and out of sight leaving Athena alone with Janey again. She looked back to the blonde junk-dealer who offered her a hand.

"Shall we go then? That lumpy old sofa still has your name on it."

Athena hesitated for a moment but took the taller woman's hand. With some effort she rose onto her "good" leg putting her arm around Janey's shoulder and together they moved out of Nina's clinic just as her next screaming, limbless patient was wheeled in. The journey to Janey's apartment was awkward to say the least. Athena hobbled alongside the taller woman mostly in silence. She could feel Janey's worried eyes on her a few times during the trip but couldn't bring herself to meet them.

When they arrived at Janey's home she helped Athena into her front room before carefully setting her down on the sofa. The blanket she had slept under the previous night still draped across the sofa arm where she had left it

"Here, hold on just a sec." the blonde said as she made sure Athena was comfortable. "I'll fix us up some hot cocoa."

After rummaging around in her kitchen for a few minutes and putting some water on her stove to boil Janey returned to the front room and seated herself on the sofa beside Athena. The gladiator was continuing to find it difficult to look the blonde junk dealer in the eye, choosing to stare remorsefully at the floor instead. Mismatched, colourful pieces of scavenged carpet laid out across the dreary metal floor panels in an apparent attempt to liven the place up.

Athena couldn't imagine a more Janey Springs attitude than draping an enormous, vibrant patchwork blanket over the duller aspects of life and every corner of her apartment reflected that. This place already held such a special place in her heart and, truthfully, there was nowhere else in the galaxy she would rather be but she shouldn't be here. She had no right to Janey's hospitality after what she had done. How could she even begin to-

"Smile for me" Janey said breaking the silence.

Athena's eyes snapped up to meet hers.

"What?" she asked, utterly baffled by the sudden request.

"I've already told you I know what happened last night was an accident." Janey elaborated. "We've all got our ghosts, Athena. I get it. I know you didn't mean to hurt me but apparently you're still looking to torture yourself over it so, if you really want to make things right that much, this is what I'm telling you to do. Smile for me, and make it a good one. Then we'll call it even and we can move on."

Athena paused for a moment staring at Janey who smiled at her and raised a scarred left eyebrow in expectation.

This woman was unreal. Athena had expected Janey to hate her. To cast her out and curse her name. She didn't understand the blonde's willingness to forgive her. Athena doubted she would have done the same in Janey's shoes but then she supposed that was one of the reasons her feelings for the taller woman were what they were. Janey was better than her. So much so that it was almost like she lived in an entirely different world to the cold, uncaring, survival-of-the-fittest one Athena had grown up in.

She had spent years since breaking away from Atlas searching for some level of redemption for the multitude of awful things she had done as one of their assassins. Trying to do some good where she could in her travels all to ask forgiveness from ghosts. She knew these were debts she could never hope to repay no matter how many moons she saved or tyrants she toppled and yet Janey offered absolution for something so small. A smile? That was something she could do. She did that all the time. Didn't she?

She froze for a moment. Actually, how did you do one of those again?

Janey's price seemed a lot less trivial all of a sudden.

The thing about spending so much time alone in the Pandoran wilderness was your grasp on even the most basic of social graces like facial expressions and having more than one tone of voice began to fall away much faster than you might think. You kind of just...bared your teeth, right? The more teeth the better, surely. Raise the cheeks up as high as they'll go and hope for the best? Better not blink either. Eye contact is always important. Just look right at her and try not to look constipated.

Steeling herself the way she normally would have before charging into a hail of gunfire she decided to simply try and make up for her lack of experience with resolve. The gladiator straightened her back, looked Janey in the eye and made the most earnest attempt at a smile she had made in as long as she could remember.

It went horribly.

She wasn't sure what she had been going for but the expression that fell across her face was less a smile and more a frightening, lurid grin that Pandora's most deranged psycho would have been proud of. Wide, unblinking eyes, gritted teeth and furrowed brow combined to form something Athena was pretty sure wasn't going to cut it.

She held the course regardless. If she had learned anything over the years it was that a bad plan was always preferable to no plan at all. Maintaining what somebody might call a smile if they were feeling charitable or had a gun to their head she scanned Janey's face for a reaction. **Any** reaction, and for what felt like the longest moment in history the blonde offered nothing. Nothing beyond a blank, unreadable stare until finally, just when Athena's face was starting to hurt, Janey's demeanor cracked.

The junk dealer's cheeks bulged up like some kind of blonde, lunar puffer fish as she made a futile attempt to keep herself under control before bursting out laughing and toppling over onto the sofa cushions. Athena was taken aback for a moment but, having spent the last several hours believing she had only brought more violence and danger into Janey's life, something about the sight of the blonde laughing filled the gladiator with a great feeling of relief. Eventually Janey's laughing fit subsided. She sat up, still giggling, and wiped the tears from her eyes before looking at Athena and reaching over to lightly poke the gladiator's cheek with her fingertip.

"There it is" the blonde said cheerfully. Her tone and expression were those of a woman who had unearthed something truly precious. Athena hadn't even realized she had been genuinely smiling from ear to ear until Janey pointed it out. The gladiator blinked and the smile dropped from her face as embarrassment took over.

"At the risk of sounding like a broken record..." Janey continued. "You're really something when you smile, Athena. Like… **wow**. You light up."

Athena took in a short breath to attempt a response but once again her words failed her and she ended up simply staring at Janey in silence instead. She felt like a complete fool but how could she possibly even begin to describe the emotional maelstrom taking place in her mind in any way that made sense? How did anyone do it? Was she the only one who found all of this so damned hard? She told herself to try and calm down or change the subject like she normally would have whenever Janey caused her to feel this way but she soon found that whatever had been giving her the strength to barely resist Janey's charms until now was all but spent.

Why did she have to be so beautiful?

The gladiator's blatant, completely undisguised gawking quickly caused Janey to visibly blush and nervously glance away towards the kitchen.

"I uh…I'm gonna go and see what I can do about that cocoa." The blonde said grinning bashfully at Athena who could almost feel the last remaining thread of her resolve breaking.

"I'll be right back, okay?"

Time seemed to slow down as Janey began to rise from the sofa. Athena couldn't find the words to say what she needed to say. She didn't even know where to start. It was a problem she faced all too frequently when Janey was involved but she refused to let the moment pass without at least trying. Athena may not have been anything close to a romance expert but she **was** a woman of action and it was time to see if that counted for anything at all.

Just as Janey was about to walk away Athena reached out and grasped the taller woman's wrist. The blonde junk-dealer turned and looked down at her but Athena said nothing, instead simply tugging lightly on Janey's arm, not pulling her but making her need for the blonde to sit back down very clear. Thankfully Janey picked up on it and complied, wordlessly sitting down again but not removing her eyes from Athena's for even a second. The moment Janey was seated again Athena leaned over with a practiced swiftness and placed her other hand on Janey's far knee.

The plan, if you could call it that, had only been to return the kiss on the cheek Janey had given her the night before. Just a small display of affection to try and reveal to Janey some tiny measure of how she felt but somewhere on the way to Janey's face the gladiator's eyes had drifted to her lips and the plan had changed. She only had a moment to see the astonished look on Janey's face before she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to hers feeling the blonde jump slightly in surprise at the contact. Athena had no idea what she was doing. The kiss was awkward and clumsy and just a little bit off-target but it contained every last bit of her newfound yearning. Janey had already caused the her to experience so many things for the first time in only a few days but Athena could never have imagined how it would feel when Janey's lips pushed back softly against hers. The sudden burst of desperation that rushed through her as if every touch-starved fiber of her being drove her forward into the kiss. It was intoxicating and, for just a moment, she lost herself.

Eventually a mental reminder of just how far out of hand the situation had gotten caught up with her and managed to snap her out of it long enough for her to pull away. Athena's body had always been her most valuable weapon. More finely-tuned and reliable than any other. She wasn't used to feeling it fighting against her but when her lips parted from Janey's she could almost hear her very cells crying out in protest. She tried her best to ignore it. She needed to think for a second.

What the hell was that? What just happened?

She found herself staring into Janey's eyes having only retreated a dozen inches or so. Part of Athena hoped Janey would be the one to speak first because she seriously had nothing but the blonde just stared back, her breathing just a little bit faster than before.

Don't just keep staring at her like an idiot. Say something. **Anything**.

"I…uh…"

I will gladly be a bumbling moron for the rest of my days if it means I can just **once** say the right thing here. Do not say something stupid. Do **not**.

"I…thought that to be the best course of action." the gladiator said quietly.

Seriously? That was the best you could come up with? You're not talking to a superior officer you idiot! Why don't you just go ahead and drag yourself over to your gun pile and shoot yourself now? Oh that's right, you can't because **no bullet in the galaxy could possibly get through your thick skull**.

Athena was just about to get started on dissolving into a pitiful puddle of humiliation when she noticed Janey was smiling. A lot.

Athena had traveled the galaxy and performed a great many hugely impressive feats in her twenty or so years spent fighting for Atlas. Her actions had caused the rise and fall of empires but being single-handedly responsible for that smile? Nothing else compared. In that moment Janey Springs looked positively radiant.

The smitten gladiator eventually managed to pull herself together and begin to make another attempt at an explanation but before she could speak a single syllable Janey was kissing her again. The blonde lunged forward and captured Athena's lips with her own, slowly pushing the gladiator down onto her back before suddenly pulling away again.

"Agh! Bloody hell, I'm sorry!" the blonde said frantically, trying not to put any weight on Athena's body beneath her. "You're hurt, I shouldn't be-"

Suddenly very unwilling to wait a single second longer Athena reached up to slip one of her hands behind Janey's head, her fingers sliding through the short blonde hairs on the back of the taller woman's neck.

"I am well enough" she replied frankly before pulling Janey's head down and pressing their lips together again.

That was all the convincing Janey needed. The blonde returned the kiss with a barely restrained passion, tilting her head and locking her and Athena's lips together. Athena hooked one arm around Janey's waist keeping the other firmly on the back off the taller woman's neck. She knew her feelings for Janey had only grown stronger since their first meeting but as the kiss grew deeper Athena found herself unprepared for just how badly she had wanted it. Her body almost seemed to move by itself, eager for a closeness it had been denied her entire life.

Athena had no idea how to kiss someone. How could she? It wasn't like she had gotten much (or **any** ) opportunity to practice before now. Thankfully, as was made more apparent with every passing second, Janey definitely did and Athena was all too willing to follow the taller woman's lead.

Janey's touch was gentle yet unmistakably hungry, as if she had to remind herself every couple of seconds that Athena's injured body was to be handled delicately. The blonde woman's body carefully shifted on top of her, shuffling her knees up on both sides so she could straddle Athena's waist. No longer needing to use her hands to support herself she used them to gently cup Athena's cheeks in her palms, tilting the enamored gladiator's face up ever so slightly to give herself better access. A few more wonderful moments passed before Janey began to pull away and slowly but agonizingly surely the taller woman's lips separated from hers and it was all Athena could do to prevent herself from chasing them down again.

Blue eyes met chestnut as the two women caught their breath for a moment. The blonde stared down at her wordlessly, her expression one of mild amazement as if she were still a little bit unsure the last couple of minutes had actually happened. Athena supposed it was nice that she wasn't the only one in that particular boat but she felt the need to make some kind of assurance. She had kept one foot out the door since the moment she had first stepped into Janey's home and she knew Janey must have noticed. It had always been in her nature to have an escape plan in place. Another little something she had Atlas to thank for. It was a hard habit to imagine breaking but Janey wasn't a shady client surrounded by armed goons in the depths of their fortified hideout. She wasn't a team of backstabbing mercs she was stuck working a group job with or an overly ambitious rival back in the Atlas barracks. She was just...Janey, and whatever Athena's situation with her was becoming it wasn't one she was going to have to fight her way out of. Her paranoia was a big part of the reason she had survived so long but Janey deserved better than to be treated like that and Athena was reluctant to go any further without making it clear to Janey that right now, for perhaps the first time in her life, not a single part of her was thinking about leaving.

It was when she began to consider how she could possibly do that when Athena's mind wandered once again to the first night she had spent in Janey's home. Specifically the moment they had shared before retiring to sleep, still so clear in her mind. Releasing the fistful of Janey's shirt she had been holding on to she slowly raised her hand to the taller woman's face. She couldn't be certain such a simple thing would mean as much to Janey as it had to her but she couldn't help but hope.

She repeated the gesture as close to memory as she could. Her thumb and forefinger stroking softly across Janey's cheek for a moment before capturing a golden pink lock of hair and carefully hooking it behind the taller woman's ear. She swallowed the lump in her throat wishing as hard as she could that at least one of the many combat training sessions her Atlas instructors had forced on her over her childhood had been replaced with a lesson on how to deal with a beautiful blonde woman staring directly into her soul. She supposed that would have been counter to their interests though. The functions Atlas had in mind for their living weapons were many but she didn't imagine running off to get seduced by impossible moon girls was one of them. Nevertheless that was where Athena had found herself and, ill-equipped or not, there was nowhere else in the galaxy she would rather be.

The warm smile that grew across Janey's face at the gladiator's touch was all Athena needed to know she felt the same way.

* * *

Later that evening Athena lay on that tattered, lumpy sofa as she had the previous night only this time she was wrapped in Janey's arms, her head rested against the taller woman's chest as she listened to the gentle sound of her heartbeat. Janey's body shifted slightly against hers and she felt a hand on the back of her head, fingers running into her hair and nails softly dragging across her scalp. The gladiator had to restrain herself from actually purring at the pleasant sensation.

"Athena?" the blonde junk dealer asked suddenly, a hint of trepidation in her voice.

"Yes?" Athena asked in response raising her head slightly to show that she was listening.

"Do you…reckon you'll stick around? Once you're all healed up I mean."

Remaining on Elpis indefinitely. Sharing Janey's home with her. When Janey had first proposed the idea only a day ago it had seemed like such a big decision to make. A major life choice. Something that required hours, days or weeks of deliberation. At the time Athena had decided to try and think objectively and weigh up the pros and cons of a life on Elpis compared to those of her life on Pandora but with her sister gone and her employment with Atlas at an end she had to wonder what exactly Pandora was to her anymore. In the end, the answer to Janey's question turned out to be far simpler than she could have anticipated.

"If you want me to."

Janey released a slight laugh that was both amused and relieved as if she had been holding the breath that carried it for a moment before speaking again.

"Damn, was I not obvious enough?" she asked before her voice took on a mildly seductive tone and she leaned in a little closer.

"I guess I'll have to try harder, hm?"

Athena smiled and closed her eyes as she felt Janey's lips touch her forehead. She knew she was being selfish. She didn't believe she deserved Janey. Not after all of the terrible things she had done as an Atlas assassin. She was a murderer and a traitor. Somebody worthy of the highest contempt. She knew this to be true but...

Janey thought differently.

The previous night in the bar she had told Athena she was more than all that. A "beautiful woman with a big heart" she had said. "More than just a tool for stabbing things". Athena couldn't say she was convinced but she also couldn't deny the fact that Janey thought so meant more to her than the blonde would ever know. It was almost enough to make her feel as if some small measure of redemption might be within her reach after all.

Whether that was true or not, she found herself wishing with all her heart she could be the woman she saw through Janey's eyes.

Athena had no idea if what she was doing was the right thing. To say she felt uneasy would be an understatement. She couldn't help but fear for Janey's safety. Everyone close to her had died, specifically by her own hand. First her parents and then her older sister. She had even killed the women she had grown up with when she turned on Atlas. Undoubtedly the best thing she could do for Janey was to stay as far away from her as possible. To leave this place and never return. That was what her rational mind had been repeatedly telling her since last night but that way of thinking was what had caused her to flee Concordia the way she did and all it had ultimately accomplished was to nearly get her killed and endanger Janey even more when she came to rescue her. What use was keeping Janey at arm's length if she ended up hurting not only herself but also someone she was coming to care a great deal for?

Athena felt Janey's arms tighten around her body and allowed herself to be pulled into a hug as she came to the realization that, for once, she knew exactly what she wanted to say to Janey next.

"Thank you." she spoke softly into the blonde's shoulder.

"What for?" she heard Janey ask in response.

"For everything." Athena replied. "For inviting me in. For saving my life."

She paused for a moment, her hand resting on Janey's side gently closing and clutching a loose handful of the taller woman's clothing as all of her feelings of gratitude towards Janey boiled down to one simple thing.

"For…not giving up on me."

The room was quiet for a moment until Athena felt the blonde junk-dealers lips moving against the top of her head.

"Well, in that case, you're very welcome…" the taller woman spoke softly into the gladiator's hair hooking her index finger under the gladiator's chin and gently moving Athena's face up so she could look her in the eyes again.

"…my dear lady."

Something was happening to her. Those feelings she had been struggling with since she met Janey for the first time were beginning to boil over. She didn't understand them and it worried her that they apparently had the power to make her feel so desperate but the choice to embrace those feelings was her own and she made it gladly.

Athena had broken away from the people who had stolen her life but it was as if laying in Janey's gentle embrace and feeling her heart race as she stared up into the eyes of the taller girl was the very first time in her life she had felt like a truly free woman. She was doubtful she would ever be rid of that barking, obnoxious voice in her head but for now it was quiet. Hushed and shoved away. Confined to some distant, secluded corner of her mind where she could barely hear it anymore. Here in this woman's arms on this strange, lawless moon on the edge of known space that voice and the ever-present compulsion to obey that came with it were all but silent. In its place was an impulse like nothing she had ever experienced. An overpowering **need** to lean up just a couple of inches and kiss Janey's lips one more time.

So she did.


End file.
